Here is Garry on Sunday evening turning what was left of the cow with a bad leg (I forget her name, Garry says she was 12 or 15 years old) into hamburger to go in the freezer. Victor bought an electric meat grinder to turn her into ground beef, very lean hamburger, while we were at the retreat on Friday.
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| The thing on the floor at front is the cream separator |
Spring is really here, the village herd started going out everyday on Monday. It's the village herd because everyone on this side of the village with cows puts their cows out everyday to graze together from now until the snow flies next fall. They take turns herding them for the day, you do one day for every cow you put out when it is your turn to herd (you may remember last fall the students were herding for us. Katya liked it so much she wants to know when it will be out turn this year.) Garry put large heifers and dry cows out the last two years, but this year he tried something new, putting out 10 cows who are not giving as much milk and will become dry over the summer. They will just get milked twice a day now instead of three times, before they go out and when they return to the barn. Many people in the village go out at noon and milk their cow or two in the field, because three times a day milking is common here, but we won't do that.
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| Cows coming home- day one |
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| That first one is the one I chased through the village two years ago! |
As an added bonus, they all knew where they were going, turned into the gate, ready to be home....and they had all done this before. Much easier than the heifers who would forget to come in our gate often, and we'd have to chase them back home from somewhere else in the village!
Planting crops
On Tuesday I brought lunch out to the field Garry and Maxim were working in spreading fertilizer. You may remember that a new fertilizer spreader was purchased this year, so they didn't have to borrow and try to get one working properly. The idea was to spread some fertilizer, then cultivate again, and the put the rest of the fertilizer on while planting on Friday and Saturday.
I thought I would drive the way I knew best, with the nice meat pie I had made them; but it turned out there were a few detours around a flooded part of the road- I got to drive uphill onto the edge of someone's wheat field, following someone's tracks, of course, and around some fallen trees. There were a number of water birds enjoying what used to be the road when I drove up, but they flew off across one of the ponds.
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| The road is underwater by the pond |
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| Birds landing on the other side |
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| Garry and Maxim posing for a photo before lunch |
Garry tells me the bags of fertilizer are hard on the back- they weight 100 kilograms each! This was urea. Garry installed the GPS monitor on the tractor that he brought back in his suitcase from Ontario, so the field was spread evenly, even if the rows wiggled a little.
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| Off with another 400 kilo to spread (with GPS too, no waste) |
New flail chopper delivery
Wednesday morning at 8 am the shiny new flail chopper (it will direct cut for feeding fresh, green-chopped feed for the cows, plus can be used to mow down hay) that was ordered from Kiev on Monday morning arrived at the farm. Here are some photos of the unloading. This is one of the things that they saw at the farm show in Kiev in February and had been talking to the company about buying. Cash on delivery, we didn't have to pay at the bank this time. The company will send someone out to assist the first time we use it- maybe next week, the alfalfa is a foot high already, and the corn silage is about gone (all fed).
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| They pulled it behind this van from Kiev |
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| Its Russian (they have a plant in Winnipeg) |
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| Unloading it with the neighbor's loader |
Waiting for rain
Garry spent the day cultivating on Wednesday, he came in after 8 pm with his face black from dirt. He said the students helping with milking had laughed when he came in to breed a cow, and he knew why when he looked in the mirror. Victor had people on a Mennonite tour that had arrived that afternoon to stay at our "B and B" until Saturday, they got see a little farm life too. Thursday we went on a trip with Masha to buy semen to breed cows from a new place, I'll do a post about it soon. By Saturday everything was planted and now we can wait for rain so everything grows!
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| Garry fixing up the planter on Friday morning |
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