Back in the village (well I am now too)

much shorter crop than the same sunflower field/village sign photo last year

Seems hard to believe that two weeks ago today we were in Manitoba with family watching Josh and Krissy get married. Garry has been very busy this past week since we returned, he has been busy baling straw most of the week, finding more to buy and bale up, most of which he has been doing for half the bales and the owner of the crop gets the other half of the bales delivered to them. We need as many bales as we can get because the sraw was really short on the grain fields this year with the drought. Garry plans to grow some winter wheat of his own next year, so he will have straw of his own.

bagging up grain

He also bought four and half tons of of wheat, because for our shares we rent, part of the traditional rent is not just cash, but grain and straw...and even liters of sunflower oil when it gets pressed in the fall. The guys have been bagging up the wheat and delivered three tons for rent this week from the pile that the truck dumped under the machine shed. Now they are bagging up the rest and they will get it turned into compicorn (grain to feed the cows.)

We certainly won't have any of our own corn grain to feed them this year, we will be buying all of it.
He just got the chopper back from a farmer who made eight or ten acres of corn into silage this week, because it has not rained and he decided they will have to start chopping the rest of the corn fields on Monday for silage. So far the parts that were weighing down the suitcases this time have not been needed. Many of the corn fields you see on the way to Dnepropetroesk are actually drying up, but at least we can salvage ours as silage to feed the cows (even if it will not be very good silage!) The sunflower fields seem to be doing better, but the plants are shorter than last year and starting to look really droopy by last afternoon with the hot sun beating down all day. In the morning they look a little better after a slightly cooler night.

Garry drove me into my first day of teaching English Monday morning, then the Lada was supposed to get taken apart by the Lada-fixing man down the street to get the transmission fixed. Second gear really doesn't work anymore, it has been popping out of gear for a while now. The plan was it would be fixed while we were in Canada, but for some reason that did not happen. I was going to spend a few nights with Marina (another teacher) and her husband Jenya (or Eugene) and the car was supposed to be finished by Thursday.

One of my classes- they made illustrations for Emily Dickinson poems Friday

 The 20th Summer English Institute in Dnepropetreosk had a great first week of classes, the weather was as hot as is normal for July, so I was excited to hit the air conditioning Thursday afternoon. I got a ride in Maxim's old VW van, he had to take his fiancee to Dnepro for a dentist appointment. However, our car was not ready, in fact it is still in pieces because the guy decided that he should take apart the motor and clutch since Garry has put so many kilometers on it. First report from the mechanic on Friday was another week to go before we have a car to drive, but after Garry complained to Maxim about how long it was taking...MONDAY...maybe.

Meanwhile, Max drove me back to teach Friday morning in the van - it has long furry seat covers for the front bench seat- I couldn't find a place to buckle my seat belt. He stopped for gas and then the motor didn't want to turn over, the attendant helped him push it backwards so he could jump start it.  When he picked me up after class (Yulia had another appointment) he had a friend and Yulia and they were driving the guy's  dad's Lada- it's newer than ours.