Today Maxim got to spend the day on the tractor mowing down the hayfields, Garry hopes to get some bales of hay (and some of weeds) into the haymow, but the cows will eat them anyway. The new seeding is more weeds to cut than alfalfa, but it will clear out some of the weeds so the alfalfa can grow now that there is some moisture in the ground. Maxim was happy to be finished making cement for his floors at his house yesterday, sitting on the tractor would be a nice change, he told Garry this morning.
Garry tells me that the ground worked up really nice for the millet he planted yesterday, there was no dust when he was discing. He seeded about 5 hectares yesterday in the hope of making some fall silage-- about 13-14 acres, for those of us who think in acres. Garry thought that he had to go to some training program for the trade school today, but it has been delayed until next week, so he decided we should go bowling in Dnepro this morning. He had some good games, one at 184 while I manged to bowl over 100 for three of four games.... Garry had one bad game -only 134!
I was wishing I had grabbed the camera before we left the village, there was a horse and wagon going down the street, and a man pushing a bicycle along the highway packed with 3 burlap bags of stuff and a four foot beam tied on the top of the load. To top off the I wish I had a camera moments there was a woman walking along the highway in the village of Novy Swit, wearing a minidress that glittered in the sun, it was made of multiple rows of different bright colored large sequins, the sun shone off it so much it was like it was on fire!
Garry had gone to see a movie a couple months ago with Andrei, and I had told him I would go see The Expendables when it came out. So we went to see it today. The noon showing had just started so Garry bought tickets and we went in the dark theatre, and guy tore our tickets, but then he chased us to our seats, it seemed she had sold us ones for the 2 o'clock show.... Garry said so what... he gave up and left....then the ticket girl cme and asked for our tickets, Garry gave them to her, and she came back a few minutes later with new tickets and some money, apparently it was a cheaper showing. All this happened during the opening scenes of the movie, it was impossible to hear them and figure out what they were saying over all the noise of the show. The movies here are shown in Ukrainian I was told, I caught a few words I knew, maybe it was Russian... it was really well-dubbed, they looked like they were actually speaking what we were hearing. There was only one phrase in English in the movie... I'll be back.
After we got back this afternoon, Yana came looking for Garry and said that a cow was calving. She was not supposed to calve for almost a month, but was bagging up recently (her udder was starting to fill with milk again) The calf was not presently correctly-- Garry had to reach in and find the head and feet, but he got the calf out alive...another bull of course. Last month after the two cows died, there were seven empty stalls in the barn, but four have been filled now, three dry cows and the one heifer have calved, and three more heifers are bagging up so soon there should be no empty stalls.
Garry tells me that Michelle the heifer that calved this week reminds him of the calf he bought me for Christmas before we were married. Garry bought her at a farm sale back in NJ, and gave her to me on Christmas Eve. His sisters were not impressed, they thought he was going to give me a ring for Christmas when I unwrapped a heart-shaped locket from him at his parents earlier in the day. He later told me that he had told his brother Tom about the calf, and Tom knew that meant we were going to get married, because Garry would never buy his first cow and give it away unless he was planning on getting it back.
I don't remember what her name was when her registration papers arrived. but she had an impressive pedigree. Anyway we were married by the time she had her first calf and started milking, and aquired her "real" name Bananas - because she had huge teats, as big as and shaped like...bananas (really she was ugly). She had a heifer calf the first time, just like this Michelle did. Often calves end up looking like their mothers, like people, so we weren't all that hopeful that Moonshadow Willow Bubbles, her calf, would be a great cow when she grew up. However, she was one of the best cows we ever had, unlike her mother, she gave lots of milk out of the prettest little udder with perfectly shaped small teats. So you never know this heifer calf might be a good one when she grows up, after all her daddy is a good Canadian bull!
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