The Metal Thieves

Garry was just back in Ukraine, the second Sunday in January, when he got back from church late that afternoon (after going to dinner with Doreen, who was returning through Dnepro) he discovered that a drama had unfolded in the village that day...

Here is his facebook update that day (Garry hardly uses facebook, so it was a important event.)

The neighbors caught two guys stealing our metal fence. They had already sold some of it and had another trailer full. We have impounded their car in our yard untill they repair the damage. They said they thought it belonged to someone that owed them money and were really sorry that they had taken it. Now we are plus one Volga.t ...)

To explain a bit, the "barnyard fence" over at the barn we are remodeling is made of metal railroad tracks (I was confused when I read this post as our fence around the home barn is a woven wire fence) One of the neighbors was cutting up wood behind his house while Garry was at church, and Max was in Zaporosia at his church) and decided to go investigate. He got five more neighbor guys and they snuck over to the barn site on foot across the frozen pond and captured the car of the guys cutting up our fence (we have documents for the fence, like the barn.)

The thief in black hat, signing the agreement

Fix it or we will call the police (basically)

These guys had bought the metal that the guy (former collective manager/farmer) stripped out of the middle barn last summer, that's how they were there (unlike the barn door thieves, the were not from our village)
 At this point, 6 weeks later the guys have gotten the vodka back from their car, minus the six bottles that the neighbors negotiated with Max as their reward, but their car is still in Max'x future father- in-law's yard, waiting for them to finish repairing the fence.

A week or so ago they rented this van from someone in the next village so they could start welding on the fence....they welded one day and did not return until one day this week. It sat parked in our yard for all that time.

the green van parked in the dusting of snow one day

When the guys showed up on Thursday to take the road, Maxim was checking what the guys had welded the day before, they had tacked some round pipe in the place of the railroad tracks, but not very well, Garry told me you can push it off, so it won't keep a cow inside, the guys will have to try again before Max returns their car. Unfortunately when the guys showed up for the road, Max had removed the barricade that he and the neighbor had built on Sunday to slow them down if they returned--- they had put some block of cement on the road and dug a trench around the property.