Busy in Ukraine- corn and crop demos

Garry is up early every morning, he likes to get out chopping corn by 4:30 am, when it's daylight these days in Ukraine, Max Rudei usually joins him to get a couple hours work done before the regular crew arrives to work. Some nights they keep making silage until ten pm (when it's dark.) I often catch him online in the evenings here in New Jersey for a quick chat as he makes is coffee to start his day. Thursday morning he told me that they figure there is only a 25% chance that Putin will invade Ukraine now. I told him I wouldn't be flying back in two weeks if that happened!

Meanwhile, he is busy making silage, he says the bunker is one-third full now (they were able to buy the small bunker at the barn site, and with a little repair, it was ready to use this spring.) The (200 dollar a bag seed) Pioneer corn is all in the bunk now, they are chopping the $25 a bag Ukrainian stuff now, and Garry says it is much better, taller with more leaves and bigger cobs. He said the kernels are dented, but the cobs are still pretty wet. The Pioneer couldn't keep up in the dry weather, it was shorter with much smaller cobs, so for this year the cheap stuff was the better choice. Good thing that he planted mostly the cheaper stuff!

On the weekend they were busy replacing the oil pump in the tractor doing the chopping because the oil pressure was low, now it is working fine.


Then the loader tractor broke on Monday, so they borrowed a tractor to pull wagons from someone in the village. They are still working on fixing the loader tractor, so they hired Serosia and his big loader tractor to pack the pile (you have to squish the chopped corn firmly into the pile to remove air pockets and prevent spoiling.)

looks like Andrey driving the borrowed tractor

Packing the silage in the bunker

One morning this week Garry went to a crop demonstration nearby sponsored by a seed company, and Gaspardo, an Italian equipment manufacturer.  He said they had sunflowers, corn and sudan-grass on display and all the small local farmers were there so he got to talk to everyone (in Russian. ) They were serving drinks and were cooking up some free food to eat; but he left early to take a nap after not sleeping much the night before. He is also busy working on the finishing up the water and septic system at the barn renovation for the school this week, while other guys are running the tractor.

Field demonstration in Ukraine