and the rain came

There is now plenty of moisture to get the wheat growing. Tuesday morning there was some rain, and sometime that night and until mid-day Wednesday the real rain arrived. Unfortunately it came with high winds and much cooler weather, so many people are wearing winter coats, and there were trees down and power outages all over the region. Here in the village the power didn't go out but a down tree caused a voltage fluctuation that ruined a lot of electronic things that were plugged in, like phone and computer chargers, microwaves and our six month old washer won't light up and run, so we are getting it checked out. The milk tank (cooler) had the control box zapped but Victor bought a new one and sent it out on a marshutka that afternoon, so it was fixed quickly.

view of the river from our room Tuesday morning

We had stayed for two nights in Dnepro as a mini vacation, which Garry had planned although he was worried that the sides might not get back on the barn with him gone and the rain arriving on Tuesday. We drove home Tuesday afternoon after waking up to rain that morning and Garry was disappointed to see that the barn was still open. They couldn't pick the repaired canvas up that afternoon when Maxim phoned, so it was scheduled for the next day.

Sometime that evening the wind started to howl, the rain came pouring down sideways, and both cows and milkers were cold, wet and unhappy that morning. The straw would blow away from under the cows and the rain was blowing straight through the barn, and making big puddles everywhere. This continued until afternoon milking, (the wind kept blowing hard until sometime in the night) while Garry and Maxim drove to Zaporosia to pick up the sides for the barn. When they got to the city there were trees down everywhere, one completely across the road, they had to drive on the sidewalk to get by. There were power lines in the street, and the trolley bus power lines were down in several places where trees had fallen on them, too.

Luckily the wind was not blowing on Thursday so they could get one side up on the barn, which helped make it warmer, although the ladies were happy that the wind and rain had stopped. I am sure that they are happy that the second side is going up today. Soon the barn will be ready for winter.

More photos of the storm problems in the next post, we are having problems with the internet.