My job was making soup to feed everyone. Nothing like getting into big meal mode in a hurry. Garry asked me at 10:30 if I could make soup for 20 or so. I got out the really big pot and filled it with chopped veggies from the fridge and freezer, along with the last onion and a couple potatoes. I was scraping the bottom of the barrel for ingredients, since I did not get my usual shopping trip on Friday because it was the International Women's day holiday and Garry's English classes were canceled. The soup finally boiled about 11:30, but it was tasty anyway, I even found some animal shaped pasta noodles to put in.
I had water on the table, bowls of soup and spoons when Garry came in the door with the students. Valentina handed me a bag of bread, a bag of mayonnaise and a couple kolbassa. Normally I pre-make brodabrodt, but this time we cut bread and meat and put it on the table with mayo so every one could make their own. This had an unexpected side effect, several students put mayonnaise in their soup (instead of sour cream I was told). Nelly and Victor joined us. She had been helping with the clean up.
Victor came out to do some work with the bees. It looks like five hives made it through the winter, but two are weak, six died. It was a bad fall and winter for them. A couple of the boys helped him in the morning for class, Inna was back at the dentist again (she needs a lot of work done.)
Tuesday morning Garry said they needed to get the pipe finished so they could store the fertilizer. He asked when the eleventh was and checked the calendar when I said it was yesterday. Of course the calendar in the kitchen is in Ukrainian and Monday is the first day of week on it, so it's confusing for us (it's for the girls, we have a Canadian one in our bedroom) . He said he thought the fertilizer was supposed to come on the eleventh, so he headed out to see what was happening.
The students were all supposed to be in class, but Garry pulled out a couple of the guys to help, I discovered. I was driving into Dnepro to buy groceries since I didn't have to make soup. I noticed that there was a couple trucks parked by the shop as I was leaving. Garry and some of the guys were carrying out the four meter long pipes they had stored there. Afterwards, they had to unload the trucks and stack tons of fertilizer in bags that weigh over a hundred pounds each. 120 pouns, 50 kilo bags. I wonder why Garry's back hurt that night after finding this photo on his phone...
When I returned home in the afternoon they were out in the field putting the big pipes together. Garry was pretty tired and sore Tuesday evening. Of course as he was just getting out of the shower, his phone rang again and it was someone wanting a cow bred. They would be coming to pick him up. He had time to eat the brown sugar biscuits I'd made him before they arrived. As he went out the door he commented that he hoped they were in a close village. It took a while for him to return, they were about 25 kilometers of bad road away. Garry said the man talked in Russian all the way there and back (its spring and the roads are at their worst now) but it was mostly about cows and farming so he could understand him. He was ready to go to bed when he returned.
Today (Wednesday) Garry was up early and back to working on finishing the pipe installation. The students got to work after English class, either with him in the field or cleanup or hole digging at Yana's house.
I made soup again, but we were running out of drinking/cooking water, so the soup was cooking but rather thick at 10:15 when I took a bag for bread, an empty water jug and the handcart and headed to Yana's to find the girls to go buy me some bread and water. Inna went for it and I took some photos while I was waiting. I got to meat, I mean meet, our baby boy goat. He's going to hang out with Yana's goats until he's off milk. I guess we need a goat pen.
Eventually Inna returned, pushing the hand cart with the bag of six loaves of bread. For some reason Sasha Chahighak was carrying the 18 liter jug of water over his shoulder. I loaded both things on the handcart to return home, where I added about two more liters of water to the soup, sliced bread and kolbassa and put them together with mayonnaise. It turned out I had made too many, we had less people for lunch, only ten instead of 15. Leftover soup too.
I spent the afternoon cleaning up, getting material together for tonight's group, plus Garry's weekend English classes. I thought I had a couple minutes to crochet when Sasha B came in the door, wanting me to fix up a little cut on his palm from one of the plastic pipes he told me.
Garry got in before four because we were going to SEI follow up in Kamskaya (assume my spelling is wrong). He hopped in the shower and had just finished applying shampoo when the water stopped. We end up having to rise it with some of his rainwater for his plants (we have tiny pepper plants on the window sill in our bedroom.) It was rather cold, but soon we were on our way.
He was a little sore but happy to report they had finished the pipe. Max had been working with him and the guys. Artom was on the tractor finishing harrowing the plowed fields to smooth them out before planting in a couple weeks.
Our trip to Kamskaya went well, except for dodging holes in the road (we really are spoiled with our new road between Dnepro and Zaporosia) and smoke from burning roadsides (it's spring, so all dead grass should burn).
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