Busy week

It seems it has been a very busy week. Every morning, starting Monday Garry has walked out to the field with the cow herders. It is our turn to watch the cows, for the second time this year. Time is growing short, the days are shorter-- time changed her a week before it did in Canada, so the cows return from the fields at 4 in the afternoon instead of 7.

We are responsible for 10 days - which is how many heifers and cows they we sent out to the village herd in the spring.  Garry decided that he could send out a bunch of new cows, since we have so many dry ones now. We had been down to only four going out, since the herders hate it when we put a new dry cow out. Everyone else's cows have been going out all summer, so they know what to do, so new cows are a pain, they don't know where to go, and try to go home all day!

Since the students at the trade school are supposed to learn how to pasture cows--it is on the list of things they are supposed to learn for their certificate--- Garry decided they could go out in pairs for the day to get experience. We hired a teenage boy from the village to go with them, when it was our turn earlier in the summer we hired three guys, but Max liked this guy better, no drinking on the job.




Today Masha, who interprets for Garry, went along to see what it is like and took photos with my camera, so here's a peek.

One of the Maxim's chasing our ugly dry cow

They were grazing near one the ponds

Katya is not afraid of cows anymore

Some students are going more than once, since we have ten days. Some of the girls were afraid of cows, and the director was afraid they might get injured, but so far everyone has had a turn, and they really enjoyed it; even Sasha and Katya, who were out on Tuesday when it poured rain for hours.

 Garry said they were smiling when he brought them lunch, standing there in their free President Yanacovitch raincoats. They were excited for hot soup and bread and tea, which they ate in the rain. I have been busy this week since I am responsible for making lunches ---even on Wednesday when we had to go to Dnepro-- I packed up everything but the soup, which was in the crockpot for Maxim to pack up and take out to them.Some days, like today I make something more like dinner, instead of soup. Saturday may be warmed up leftover pizza.

THE COWS WERE GRAZING A BARLEY FIELD THAT "RE-GREW"

It's pretty wet outside we really got soaked on Tuesday

Smiling faces on the herders as they come back

Thursday when the cows were coming home, Garry was packing the car full of milk cans for Victor to sell, we drove to the Metro store and exchanged them in the parking lot. Victor had our passports with the new stamps in - we are set until until November 7th, 2013. Luckily for us Victor had his Metro card with him, Garry forgot his wallet with ours in--it is like Costco, you are a member with a card, and I wanted to do a little shopping because we had invited the students for pizza tonight.





Too many students had plans, so we had only the other Maxim, Andrei and Masha for pizza tonight. They played UNO with Garry afterwards, the guys liked the spicy "Garry-style pizza".

I am not sure who won but it was very fun