Never know what you'll come home with...

Last Sunday we went to church in the village and the  pastor announced that there would be no meeting here in Nikoliapolia this Sunday because they would be going to a conference in Zaporosia. So this morning we went into Dnepro to see our friends at Morningstar Church.

 We were supposed to bring in the milk for Victor's church (since we started going to the church in the village, he comes out on Sunday mornings to get it) but the milk truck came very early this morning after milking while Garry was making feed for the cows and he missed filling the two cans for Victor first. We did bring his cottage cheese and cream, so at least they had something. It is wonderful to sell our milk to a company, for several weeks now we have been an official business and get paid more and through the bank.

Friday we finally started selling our wheat. We (mostly Max and the guy who was helping us become an official business) had been in negotiations with a big company that we could sell to officially that had the best price for weeks. They had to send out a rep last week to see that we really grew wheat and were really farmers before they would buy it. He took photos of equipment and our grain storage building.

Friday morning they took one truck load of wheat and said they would be back if they liked it. It graded out as #2, the best we have ever sold here, and we have sold 100 tonnes now. Garry says they will sell another truck full and then clean up what's left and store it in one of the old boxes to feed to the cows later. Right now with the new corn silage and brewers grain, grain is not needed in the TMR for the cows to milk well.

 We need a place to store the sunflowers under the shed until we sell them.They plan to combine some sunflowers about a week. Two of the fields- the ones near the highway- were planted with earlier season seed and are drying down quickly. The guys are excited about the crop, it looks pretty good since sunflowers cope better with drought conditions than corn.

We had a nice lunch after church, and then Garry was ready to go for a walk, but I was not feeling great (I am still not sleeping well with my lingering jet lag) so we headed home.

While we were driving home- check out the road crews still working on the highway toward Dnepro, they are further but there is no way they will finish the whole highway before winter comes-  I was trying hard to stay awake, but Garry got a phone call and was talking with a lady in Russian.

The kids on the street watching us
 in the van looking for the right house

We drove to her village before going home, she had told him she had a two week old calf to sell. It took another phone call to find her, we had to go further up the street. Garry breeds a lot of cows in this village, but he does not always remember exactly where each one is.

We ended up with a calf in the back of the van, while they were trying to decide on the best way to load it, another neighbor came over for his advise on her cow that had aborted twice, whether she should breed it again. He told me he breeds like three neighbor ladies cows there, two years ago he when to buy one heifer and came home with three.

We had to go over to the new farm to drop off the new calf and then Garry wanted to check on the alfalfa fields, looks like they will be making some more bales of hay soon.