Well since I last posted, we have been busy. Wednesday morning I drove into Metro to get some groceries with company coming that night, I was a little worried that I was unable to locate my cell phone before I left, but I dared the Lada or the road or the police to make me wish I had it, and all was well, although I did have to swerve around a pothole fixing truck as I turned off the the highway into the village, and then had to swerve around a pair of mating geese on main street in the village. When Garry came in from spreading fertilizer for a quick bite, I had him dial my number and found my cell, buried in our bedroom, while I had been sure I left it near the computer!
A delivery of cattle feed came, it takes several guys to get the grain flowing through the auger into the bin upstairs from the aged truck. The guys finished off the cultivating and fertilizing, and then came in and took showers, getting my clean shower dirty again!
Our friend Stacy, who stayed with us last June, has been teaching English this year in Kramatorsk (we visited her before going to Donestk in the fall) came for dinner and overnight with her mom and stepdad, who are visiting her here in Ukraine this week. We had a great time, although the pototoes weren't quite done. The next morning we saw them off with Victor, and his milk to sell since it was Thursday, and got ready to leave for team meeting. Garry asked me if I had seen his passport, he wanted to go to the bank to take some cash out with the VISA and they want to see your official ID. I had not known it was missing, so he decided that I should bring mine, because he wanted to buy the corn seed he had ordered on the way back from Dnepropetroesk.
So Stacy and her parents joined us for lunch after the meeting, we were stuffed with salads, sandwiches and then a yummy banana cake dessert Trish made, before we got ready to leave with our newest guest Keisha the cat who is going to stay on the farm with us, securely fastened in a cardboard box. She meowed a bit, but didn't try too hard to escape on the drive back to the village. We had two stops to make, one at a bank and one to pay for and pick up the seed corn.
Garry decided to go to the same bank he had used the last time he got money out (while I was in NJ, the last time he used the missing passport) so we drove over to Roboshka (work) street, where there were several crews at work fixing holes in the road. It seems to be the week for fixing the road and cleaning up the parks and roadsides, as you can see in the photo I took yesterday.
Any way we parked and walked into the bank, where the people behind the counter and the security guard where very excited to see him, because they had his passport for a couple weeks. One guy got it out of a safe, happily talking in Russian about how he had come back to get his passport. So Garry got his money and we were off to get the corn seed in Saloame.
In Saloame, the place was getting ready to close up for the day, and had already locked the warehouse and put the signed paper seals on the door, so the lady had to open it after Garry paid (in cash- which is pretty much the only way to pay in Ukraine.) The box with the cat ended up on top of a pile of bags of seed in the middle of the Lada for the rest of the trip home, since the back was full of the empty milk jugs Victor had brought along to lunch.
Today Garry plans to get some corn seed in the ground, he decided that he could have planted it earlier last year, and the ground is worked up and ready to go. Before lunch he had to go back to Salome to the tractor parts place, because the planter they borrowed (same one as last year) is missing the connector pieces for the links in the chains. No one has used it yet, so they are reassembling the chains that drive the mechanicism that plants the seed, and they take the chains off for the winter and store them in buckets of oil. Garry assumes someone borrowed them for something else they were using over at the farm in Molzavaharina, after Max made two trips there looking for the right chains. When Garry or Max return the equipment they borrow the engineer at the farm checks it over and makes us buy the parts to fix it, apparently we had to buy a bearing for the cultipacker after we used it. Once last year Max had to go over and wash whatever we had borrowed because it had got dirty driving it back through the muddy field roads! Garry is remembering to check over the machinery for faults before he takes it home now, and they wait for a dry day to return things.
Garry tells me the engineer at the farm does not fix the equipment, he diagnoses the problem and orders the parts to fix it, but it is someone else's job to actually fix it. Garry says he saw one of the big farms spreading fertilizer last week. There were 18 people in the field. Five tractor drivers, five guys to stand on the back of the five seed drills (they put it on with an old-fashioned drill, but not with the grain seed) to make sure it is coming out, three truck drivers with the loads of fertilizer, three truck unloaders, an engineer, an agromonist, and the boss, each sitting in three separate cars, to supervise. Maybe that's 19.
At four o'clock the planter was finally ready to go, and I rode with Garry to the next village on the highway to buy more corn seed. We met a guy at the restaurant there, Victor had talked to him and arranged for him to find us. Garry had ordered 20 bags of the expensive seed- imported from France- we picked up yesterday, thinking that it would be enough to plant most of the fields. However there was only 50,000 seeds in a bag instead of the 80,000 he thought so he ended up buying more of this Ukrainian corn than he planned at $1.50 a kilo, that's right it is in bigger bags, but Garry thinks he may now have more than he needs, the guy said it is good for silage, stays green longer. The guys hope to finish planting the first smaller field of corn today, they have started finally, and Saturday they can really get planting.
We let Keisha the cat loose in the house yesterday, so she can adjust before we turn her outside, she does not like the other indoor cats, I think she snuck in our bedroom and is hiding under the bed, so no cat photo!
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