Corn and wheat and heat

The corn is looking good as you can see in this photo Garry put up on facebook on Sunday, he says it is 10-12 feet tall, but his sons say it doesn't show it in this picture.

The wheat harvest started last week when Garry returned to Ukraine. He has been working with some of the students; making this year's giant straw piles, in temperatures that have hit 42 C,(107 F). Apparently they bought all the Pepsi at the store in the village. the first giant pyramid of straw is done I heard.

 To make matters worse, the air conditioning is broke in the car, and the shop was unable to fix it on Friday when it was in the shop for seven hours! At least the A/C in the main room in the house is working... except when someone turns on the electric kettle to make tea, then it trips the breaker on the panel.

 Who makes hot tea to drink when its that hot? Remember Garry has a bunch of Ukrainians living in the house right now. He says the kettle is on for tea about six times a day. Hopefully our Canadian visitors are enjoying their time in the village, I think Garry said they fly out on the coming Friday.

 I haven't seen any photos of the straw yet. He did say that the combine was cutting higher off the ground to avoid the green weeds that the abundant rains have created, so they are leaving some potential straw behind. The wheat itself is actually better than last year, with it running about 4.2  tons per hectare, last year it was about 3.8. A lot of  the land we were able to rent for this year  was planted in wheat last fall.

 Last year we had more land, but more was in corn, I believe there are more acres of wheat this year than last, because it is better than corn for a cash crop in Ukraine. With the normal dry summers you are more likely to harvest a decent crop of wheat than get corn to become grain, some summers it is so dry Garry has to quickly turn the corn crop into silage, which you can't sell, just feed the cows. If its really dry, it isn't very good for that. Luckily it seems that this may be the one year in ten the local farmers say that there is a bumper crop... just a little more rain in August will do it.

  They have stored quite a lot of grain already, were going to sell a truckload or two on Monday to pay the cash rents, and some of the people in the village who get their rent in goods had picked up their two ton already. Garry said they would be dispensing it from the new shop floor, I'd like to see a photo of that.