Pizza and other things

Silage harvest in the irrigated field started on Thursday, but they had to stop on Friday morning due to rain, it got too hard to pull the full wagons out of the field. The soil gets very slippery when wet, even if it has not rained a lot. There is a lot of silage there, since the corn plants are so tall compared to the other fields. Corn silage is made by chopping up the entire plant, cobs, stalk and leaves and having it ferment in a covered pile to reduce spoiling.

The first silage they made was about the same amount as was harvested last year, and since they ran out, they planned to make a lot more this year, so that is why this field is also being turned into silage. The pile they made in August is about what they had last year from 30 hectares. This year they did 70 to get the same amount with the drought making shorter plants. Luckily there is grain in the silage this year, unlike the really bad harvest four or five years ago. There will be some to combine since not all of the "naturally watered" corn fields were turned into silage.

 They have got some of the wheat fields (where it was grown this year) plowed and have hired someone with a big heavy tractor to disc up the fields where corn silage was harvested earlier in August. Those are the fields that will be planted into winter wheat sometime over the next weeks. Often the fields that were in sunflowers are planted in wheat, but there is a concern with the herbicide that was used on them, with the dry weather this summer every time it has rained it has killed off the weeds again. There is a possibility that the herbicide may still be working and affect the wheat, so it looks like we will have about 70 hectares to plant in wheat. The sunflower fields will be planted in corn or alfalfa next spring.

For the last couple weeks the cows are only being milked twice a day (at 5 or 6 o'clock, I'm not sure which) since there were problems with the milking system a few days before Garry flew to Canada. Now someone has to run the wash cycles manually every time it needs to fill with water, they start and stop the water fill because the automatic part is broken.

Garry is sleeping good already, while I am still not wanting to sleep at the right time of day. I should be over it in time for my trip to New Jersey for my father's birthday at the end of September!

 Last night we had the students in for pizza night.  I had invited them for 5 pm but due to the new milking time they straggled in over a couple hours. Unfortunately we counted wrong and there was none left for Vika when she arrived five minutes after I handed out the last slice! She graciously accepted yogurt and a bun. We watched some Mr Bean, a favorite of the students until after eight pm, when they headed home in the light rain.

Our new guy Vitaly with his pizza

Julia and Dima

There is no wedding this weekend, as we talked with Julia and Dima when we got back and reached consensus on setting a new date for their wedding- March 18th, her birthday and about a year after they started dating.

We should be better prepared to host a wedding party than now, and find all the stuff to make it wonderful. They can even get more pre-marital counselling. Garry has been talking with them every week or two since spring about marriage, and they have realized and worked through a few issues already.

 They are hoping to even have some Canadian guests if there is a work team coming in March. Julia is very attached to Eugene and I think he could walk her down the aisle that Sunday if he's here.