Maybe... crop report

It's looking like the rain last week saved the corn for now, but with the temps going up this week as we finish our last week of English teaching, Garry will be checking the forecast and praying for more rain to save the corn crop again before he leaves for a couple weeks at home on the seventh of August.
We went on an extensive crop tour looking at all the corn fields Garry could find on our way home from Dnepro Saturday morning (even some that weren't ours along the highway, that were planted earlier than his). Since I didn't have the camera, I only have photos of ears from two of our early fields that Garry picked. In spite of looking like they have been hit by frost with brown leaves on the tops and bottoms of the plants in those fields (because of the hot dry weather before the rainstorm), it looks like they may make cobs, and not need to be turned into silage if we get more rain...

The wheat is all combined, they had to wait a couple days after the rain for it to dry enough, but Garry and Max are pleased with the results, the better fields yielded 60 bushels to the acre, the poorer ones did 45. Not bad considering that it was planted so late because of the dry fall last year and the fungus this spring.

Hoping to have more land in wheat this fall so we can plant less corn since winter wheat almost always is a safer crop to grow in Ukraine than corn. The sunflower fields look like they could be our best crop ever, and won't need to get more rain. Next year Garry hopes to plant more sunflowers, they are a good cash crop, and have a better chance to perform well with less moisture.

Max has been busy delivering as much of the wheat for shares as he could this week (they get three ton each year, along with a portion of sunflower seed, straw, and sugar.  A couple landowners wanted to weigh their own instead of taking the combine weight by the truckload, or didn't have a place to put it yet. Everyone has had their straw bales dumped in front of their home, and many have asked Max for their giant sack (120 pounds) of sugar if they make jam. Now to sell some wheat to pay the people who take cash instead of products and pay land taxes for the village which have risen from 250 grivna last year to 800 this year, except registered shares which even more- 1200.  No one will want to make things official, apparently they think it will mean the big farmers will pay more taxes.

The storage shed should be finished soon, I didn't take a photo yesterday, but the front is done  now with the doors to still be put on, and then we'll need to get he cement poured on the empty part of the floor.





Garry went out to check on the bee hives around noon.Victor has not been out since his injury, so Garry was checking if they had filled the frames he and Max put in last week.

   He did not get stung, although I was wondering what would happen if a bee flew up his shorts. The yellow hive needs to have some honey removed, its so full they are building honeycomb on the ceiling.