Maxim tells Garry it is a holiday today, March first is the beginning of spring. Unfortunately, like yesterday it wasn't very nice out. Wednesday was cold and snowy, and everytime Garry came in today, he said "it was not very nice outside." So maybe more like March coming in like a lion, but no big snowstorm. I still have vivid memerios of a March first storm when I was a child in New Jersey, when there was a loud bang in the middle of the night as the wind howled, the snow piled up and the power went out. We got to stay up at the farmhouse for a couple days, I think. I remember making blueberry muffins with my grandmother.
Before the snow came back, the people in the village started letting their chickens, ducks and geese out during the day. The babushka next door came over early in the week to complain to Maxim that Mint and the new puppy was chasing her chickens. Polo runs over to show off the fact that he's special and free to the two, since they are tied up now next to the summer kitchen. Mint has the dog house Seth built, and the puppy has a rope that can get to the shed door. The puppy is unhappy about the whole idea, the neighbor lady told Max last summer that she loves to hear Mint whine, then she knows he is tied up, and her chickens are safe when she goes to the store.
Polo came along on our walk, he sticks close if there are any big dogs nearby, and was torn when Garry turned to go to the store and I headed home when we got back to our street (the collective barns are across the pond from our place) but he followed me home with a few looks back to see whether Garry was coming yet.
Maxim's brother Andrei took a marsustka (mini-bus-van)again today to go home to visit before the start of the big project next Monday. I promised photos of our Tuesday afternoon walk over to the collective barn (which is Garry's new project) so I'll try to explain what he's up to this spring.
Garry has been working with the Mennonite Brethren missionary that works with orphanges on a project to start a trade school in our village. One of the things this school would teach is agriculture, and they would like to have a dairy barn as both a teaching place and way to raise funds to keep the project going. So Garry is going to manage the dairy project.
The group has been able to purchase certificates from collective members in the village and buy one of the old collective barns, water towers and other small items there,(although the paperwork may need a few signatures yet from the government.) The first thing they will do is clean it out- someone piled some hay at some time inside the barn, then they will start the reno to turn the old tie stall barn into a
free stall barn. This morning Garry had the man we bought cement from for our barn two years ago out to talk about contracting for the cement for this barn.
The car is back, so Garry went to play basketball tonight, it was supposed to be ready last night, but one of the parts turned out to be for the wrong model of Lada, so the guy fixing it had to go back to Zaporosia to trade it for the right one before putting the new shocks on.
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