Ready to go...just stop the rain

Garry has been looking for a break in the rainy weather (unlike last year- when he was waiting for the normally wet fall to arrive in vain) so he can get his silage made. Yesterday it was cloudy but things had dried out, with next week's forecast looking pretty good, Garry had Maxim start cutting the alfalfa down. He plans to make a layer of alfalfa, then a layer of the prusso millet, and then cover the silage pile in the "garden" next to the barn. That way he says they can feed the milking cows the alfalfa and everything else the prusso.

 I used the bad camera for this photo- it's greener in person

There is a lot of stuff out there to cut, it looks like the prusso millet did feel the light frost last week a bit, and all the rain has it lying down in places. It is three feet high, and more of it has been making heads.
Max did not get much alfalfa mowed the first day, he spent all morning working on the mower - one of the discs (that cuts the hay down) had gotten bent and needed fixing.
The prusso will get cut when the alfalfa field is finished. 
 We had a little rain last night, which will not hurt what's cut, but may set back the schedule if they can't get into the field to cut more today, which is looking cloudy again.

This morning Garry and Max went out to the field and brought back a little wagon full of fresh green alfalfa to feed the cows. What a treat for the girls and hopefully a good dose of vitamins and minerals, as Garry is trying to get more of the them in the ration. It seems that premixes with vitamins aren't easy to find here, he is still looking for a easy inexpensive way to feed some minerals to them, he thinks that some hoof problems that he has found recently could be due to a lack of zinc in their diet. Cows tend to avoid eating the little piles if you spoon them on top of their feed, I guess they taste funny or bad, and that's why it works better to mix them in with the grain to hide them.

Garry just traded a bull calf for a heifer calf from a lady in Pervey Mai (First of May.) When she brought it this morning it turned out that the heifer calf was five months old, and the bull calf we had to trade was only two months old, so Garry came inside for some cash to pay her a bonus for the difference in size. Garry offered 750 grivna, and then she decided they should weigh them, because hers was so much bigger, she thought she'd get more money. However the heifer was only 60 kilos heavier, which would bring it down to 500. According to Maxim, she said that she'd never sleep tongiht after such a bad desicion, but Garry told her he'd pay the original amount, so she'll sleep good tonight after all.

Too wet to cut hay today

Heifer shed under construction - with squash vines growing up the back

Then he decided to buy the metal for the roof of the little shed they are building for some of the heifers for the winter, since we have too many in the pens. Garry had bought lots this spring when he thought they would be in the new trade school barn this winter. The big ones are just being bred now, in the hopes that the barn will be ready to milk cows there in nine months.

Garry has been busy with preparing to teach class twice a week, his research on the internet cuts into the time I have for blogging! It also cuts into Garry's time for getting everything else done. With Andrei attending classes at the school ( he is one of the three village students studying with the orphans)  and Maxim busy working on getting his water and septic systems finished before winter (and before the irragation water was turned off to the village this week to fill the cistern they dug) the progress on the shed is slow---Andrei did some welding on it last Saturday to make the roof supports. 

On Monday afternoon, Garry asked me to go with him to buy some sheets of chipboard to build a second three calf hutch --- it seems like there is always more than three calves in them. Since the whole point of calf hutches is keeping the calves separate to prevent the spread of dieases, we need to make more hutches.

He got five big sheets of regular and three pressure treated ones --I think they are for the roof, and we put them on top the the car, and Garry strapped them to the roof rack. Unfortunately, we got less theat a Kilometre up the street when the load shifted and as Garry tried to brake and hold on, and I tried to prevent them from sliding off the front passenger side with my arm out the window too, we lost them over the front and they went all over the edge of the road. We jumped out, pulled them off the street, and got them back on, and drove slowly back to Nova Lena, where Garry bought a big roll of scotch tape and we taped the sheets together at the front and back. They stayed securely on top of the car, although we did go back to the village at a top speed of 50 kilometres and hour, with our hands on the top to feel any shifts. The Lada has a dent in the hood now, amazingly the wood panels suffered no damage from hitting the street.

Garry's QSP (chipboard) waiting under the shed

 Now Garry just needs time to build the hutches....and finish the shed. They just got back with the metal, on top of Maxim's old VW van. It looks like the shed may be finished today anyway. The sun is peeking out a a little this afternoon, but it's still too muddy out to cut hay.