Snow and other problems

Tuesday I went along with Garry after lunch to take the second year students to "evening school" in the afternoon. Victor is working on our Ukrainian resident documents and wanted us to come along to the office with him in downtown Dnepro in case they wanted to see us.

Right after we ate our chicken pot pie for lunch with Maria, Garry got a phone call and had to go over to the "new" barn to breed a couple cows before going to Dnepro.

While he was gone to the farm, there was a knock on the door, it was Victor Penner with a Canadian Mennonite tour group. I explained that we needed to leave soon, but we talked for a few minutes and took some photos (one man on the tour from Alberta is a reader of this blog) and we discovered their interpreter was Maria's teacher, so they took one of them too. I handed out my info sheet I printed up last fall when we had a number of tour groups. Sorry to say I forgot to ask if anyone wanted to use the bathroom while they were here, and it was too muddy to take them for a quick barn tour.

When Garry returned he had Leila with him, he had picked her up walking this way in the rain which was mixing with snow. We put the water jugs in the van to fill in Dnepro.

 Garry was listing off all the things he needed to buy while we were in Dnepro to fix things at the farm and a hot water heater for the boys house (they have three- one for each bathroom and one sprang a leak, likely from the salty well water). We stopped and picked up the rest of the students by the "new house".




We drove to Dnepro in the rain which was mixing with bigger snow flakes and ice pellets and dropped the students off for classes. Julia (some of the grads go to get the better diplomas too) reminded Garry that they would be done at 4 not 4:30.

The wall we sat in front of for an hour or so

Then we phoned Victor and drove downtown to meet him. We ended up sitting in the office while Victor went into cabinets (offices) and back out to get one more thing copied for about an hour and a half or so- the last time he had to run back to a bank that had issued both receipts for payment in Garry's name instead of one for each of us. Victor kept our documents now there is one more office he needs to visit before everything is done.

We then drove back to pick up the students and even went inside where they were in the computer room. The snow was starting to stick. Garry decided he could get all the stuff he needed and fill the water jugs on Wednesday when he went back to Dnepro. Victor had made him an appointment for an x-ray and doctor visit for his ankle.


Garry bought a bunch of bananas so everyone had one to eat on the way home- only fair because they had fed us"jack" cookies on the way there. They come in wrappers- chocolate covered wafer cookies, the students think it's funny because they have the same name as Jack Stefanyk from BC.

When we woke up in the morning there was no electricity in the village and a lot of snow. About eight inches of wet snow. I don't think the tour group went to Molachansk today. All over the Dnepro- Zaporosia regions there were down trees, heavy snow and no power because of down lines.

Garry went over to the new barn to breed a cow around six am and didn't come back until noon. The snow continued to fall for most of the morning.

There was no electricity for the first time at the barn and the plan to milk with the generator and vacuum from a tractor did not work as they had hoped. They ended up milking ten cows and then turning off the system to drain the milk out and then repeating it again with the next ten cows.

 Since the highways were covered in half a foot or more of snow, no milk buyers came either, so they had an overflowing milk tank by the end of the day.


Garry also discovered his cow that he'd found with a DA that had looked better yesterday after they rolled her over on Monday to untwist her stomach was looking worse, so they decided to slaughter her. That's why he was carrying a cow leg with Max when he came in the door at 12:30.

 The sun came out in the afternoon, but Garry did not go to the doctors as planned, he spent most of the afternoon with Max trying to fix things at the barn.

We didn't think it would happen today, but the power was restored by late afternoon, around 4:30. Yana with Karina and Julia's help were separating milk to make cream and cottage cheese out of some of the excess milk.

Tomorrow I'll be grinding and freezing hamburger meat.