Weekend update- plus!

Saturday Garry managed to take time off from students and farming to come with me to Dnepro for the annual SEI picnic. Most years it is very hot at the picnic on the island, but this year it was cool and overcast in the morning. However by two o'clock the sun had come out, and I had not brought my hat so I was getting a little hot.

Sunday afternoon we went south of Zaporosia for our friend Jessica's groundbreaking for her organization House of Compassion. It will be foster homes for young orphan children, they hope to start building with the foundation of the first of four planned houses this year, although they will have to wait for the electricity until sometime next year.

There was singing, blessing, prayer and of course a shovel in the dirt. The farmer had not gotten the wheat harvested off the 4 hectares that was purchased last year overlooking the Dniper river, so we mashed a little down for the ceremonial afternoon.





 For more about Jessica's organization you can check out the website:  http://houseofcompassion.org/ 

On Saturday the combine arrived and started the wheat, so Garry had to check on it as soon as we got home from Dnepro. Garry is very pleased with the yield. In spite of the dry spring the crop is running twice as much per acre as last year (about 70 bushels I think he said). Of course last year’s crop was very disappointing, but it is good to know we will have grain to sell to pay the bills for a while besides having some to feed the cows and some to give away for shares. We still have more people who take the goods rather than cash for the rent on their pie or share (5-6 hectare piece of land).

Besides getting a couple tons of grain and some straw bales, and some sunflower seed, they get a 50 pound bag of sugar, so on Saturday after the SEI picnic Garry and I picked up 12 bags to deliver to people's houses. Right now everyone is making jam- there are some apricots ripe now that survived the frost this spring- so they are all happy to get their sugar now.

Interestingly, the lady at one house we brought sugar to on one of the other streets in the village on Saturday told Garry that she follows us on facebook.

Garry and Max delivered the rest of the bags on Sunday, but we need to get more this week to take care of everyone. Max made sure everyone got one, but some people have more than one pie, so they get more than one bag.




Garry has been busy with baling straw, trying to get all the work done as quickly as possible. On Monday  he helped stack it on wagons and then stack it under the new shed, so he was pretty tired by evening.

This has been his day this week, make feed for the cows in the TMR around the time I leave for Dnepro- he kindly backs the van out for me onto the road first- and then helps with baling, and stacking the bales along with feeding the guys working with the straw (and the combine driver when he was here) lunch, and fixing things that break

This was the straw shed Sunday evening,
by Wednesday morning it was looking pretty full
(but I didn't get a photo)

This is one of the regular cornfields near the "new barn"

Here is one of our sunflower fields I pass everyday as I drive.

They are looking good.

Many fields are bright yellow now

Sunday night when we got home, Garry had to go to a village to breed a cow for the lady who had phoned around noon before we went to the groundbreaking.   I went along and got a couple photos of Garry breeding the cow inside their barn.

Of course the phone conversation was in Russian (and them asking him to check on another cow that was not bred yet this year. ) Garry even admired their nice calf, and asked if it was female.

They had  a nice looking heifer calf and a couple of cute piglets too.

This week I have been busy driving to Dnepro everyday for English teaching, and twice one of the girls has ridden along with me so Victor could take her to visit the dentist, she is having a root canal done.

 Today we had our annual SEI celebration of Canada Day. Of course since I am not Canadian I have to try harder than everyone else. Here I am with my big bow on my head with the other teachers at assembly. Esther and I planned the assembly = all Ron (the director) asked was for something different than last year, so I had some active games for some students, shooting chocolate pucks with mini- sticks and assembling Canada puzzles and she made an informative powerpoint about Canada and had adult Canada 150 coloring pages for everyone.