Friday afternoon there was a bang and smoke when Yana turned on the milk cooler for the afternoon milking. Friday is one of the days that the tank gets emptied and washed when we sell milk to Oxana's yellow van. The same part that broke a few months went again, because it got some water in it when the tank was washed before milking. Garry says that the seal on it was too big- made for large North American size wiring instead of tiny Ukrainian electric lines, it seems.
At first Garry thought maybe they would turn the afternoon milk into cheese, but they had taken milk over in the morning for the neighbor lady to process for sour cream and cottage cheese for Sunday's church sale. He also thought that they would be able to get someone from the DeLaval dealer out to fix it like before, but Victor called back to say they weren't coming. Garry thought they could cool the evening milk the old-fashioned way (like last year) and put it in cans. Eventually it all ended up in the tank, where it seemed to be cooled off- there were three milkings in it when Victor (using his electrician training) got to the farm Saturday around noon with the needed part- and got it installed in half an hour. In two weeks Garry has had to fix both the milk tank and the vaccuum pump. He says the milking system is quieter now, that pump must have been on the verge of going (bad) for a while.
This (Sunday) morning, Garry went out to get the milk jugs filled for the church deliveries, and decided it was a little off-flavor, probally because that first milk did not get cooled fast enough, and the newer milk had been mixed with it, so we only took the smetana (sour cream) and cheese to Dnepropetroesk today. Yana tasted it and told Garry it was normallna but remember sometimes the milk in the stores is sour here! IT will be fine to sell to Oxana on Monday, she is turning it into smetana and seerl (cheese) anyway.
The plowing is all finished, they got the headlands (outer rounds of the field) done on Saturday. Friday Maxim finished off the gardens we needed to plow, because our tractor just wasn't up to plowing the alfalfa field. Garry tells me plowing was expensive, we spent 10,000 grivna on diesel fuel for the tractors. At least we didn't break anything, especially the borrowed tractor! Garry says Maxim is happy to be finished, he was worried that it would snow before we were done.
Many people in the village are burning wood this year to heat with, since the price of natural gas has gone up significantly from last winter. When we bought our new new gas furnace it was cheaper because it wasn't a dual purpose one. Garry says he saw two people in the village cutting up wood with a large bow saw when he brought Max lunch on Friday.
You can see that winter is coming to Ukraine, even without the occasional snow flurry. Garry has been raking and burning leaves this week in the yard. We really noticed the difference driving into the city this Sunday from last. Last week many of the trees were still wearing yellow leaves; today, with the exception of the willows, just a few trees were still hanging on to a couple brown leaves. There was even a little drizzle on the windshield when we drove in. Last week there were gleaners out picking up cabbage leaves to feed their animals at the vegetable farm, this week the fields there are all plowed under. We did see a man out gleaning in a disked up cornfield, must have been poor pickings- half buried in the dirt, and the corn cobs cut up by the disk.
It was even cold inside the hall that the church rents for services today, everyone was wearing their coats, although the praise singing would warm up anyone, and the sermon was about joy.
No snow in the forecast for the next couple days, which is a good thing, since we are leaving in the morning to drive to Kramatroesk to see our June house guest Stacy, who has recently arrived back in Ukraine and will be teaching English there until summer.
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