Farm update

OK, while I have this great internet at Doreen's I'll do another quick post! Look for more blog posts soon, we are getting the antennae put on top of the house so the internet should work better - its 3G but...

 On Wednesday the heifer calf streak ended at 11 when Garry pulled a bull calf from the cow (actually it was a heifer) that had gone down a week or two ago. She had been doing better since they put her in the pen instead of the stalls, we'll see how she makes out now that she has calved.

A rather unusual looking calf born this winter

Garry says that we are up to 95 animals- cows, heifers and all those heifer calves that were born this winter!
Of course there are only 38 stalls for milk cows and those are full of cows who are milking, the dry cows are all in the heifer pen now. In fact, for the first time they will dry off a cow who is still milking early because they won't have a stall for her, since so many first calf heifers have freshened recently.

We are making more milk than ever, about 750 liters each day, and still about to sell it all, although the price is lower than past winters. It is a bad economic winter, even though there is not a lot of milk for sale in the markets, people are not paying more due to lack of disposable funds- milk is a luxury for most Ukrainians, not a staple.

Garry is excited that there should be about twice as much land to farm as last year, he is planning what crops he can plant in the spring. He has bought fertilizer to spread on the 50 acres of winter wheat, and just bought a spreader on Wednesday to put it on with - he went to Dnepropetroesk to buy tires for the car before our trip and discovered that the Dnepro Farm Show was on, much smaller than the Kiev one, but local dealers to talk to. He got there before Victor did and was able to talk with people at a number of booths about their products, in Russian of course.  He hopes to get the fertilizer on early in March.

The fertilizer for the wheat

The chopper in pieces

He has been working on fixing up the chopper, he brought back some parts in his suitcase remember, they are working on it in a "Box" a shed that has compartments people in the village rent. They are going to try making some parts, it has a lot of worn out pieces on it now. A good project to work on indoors in the winter.

Anyway, we will be back toward Dnepro about 2 this afternoon, hoping to get past the really bad parts of the trip with all the holes before dark... and see what's been happening back in the village. Maybe a new heifer calf...