Rain and growing things

 Saturday evening we arrived back in the village after Garry taught English in Dnepro.  He had gotten the guys started on putting the steel on the roof that morning.  Max was going to help them, but he was busy fixing the milk pump (the one that pumps milk from the tank into the milk truck.  When I drove to tell him we needed to leave soon at nine am, Max was still working on it,  since the milk truck would arrive any minute.  He was going to work with the students as soon as possible. 

As we drove into the village,  Garry headed right to the barn to see how they made out. He told me he hoped that they had gotten half done with the steel on the roof.  I told him he'd be lucky if they had finished a third. We were both surprised,  they had finished it all. Max said he did all the screwing while the guys (and some of the girls) moved the metal from the pile up to the roof. He said  he kept them working until 3 o'clock,  and then it rained for ten minutes just as they were putting the last sheets up.


Now we are waiting on the plastic for the front of the barn, and they need to get all the gates up to make two pens (which means Max needs to weld a lot) and finally move some heifers in the new barn.

Sunday Max saw that Artom had not noticed that the planter wasn't planting sunflowers for six passes in one field,  so Artom had to get the corn planter he put away on Saturday back out to plant that piece. Max has been spraying sunflower fields for weeds. The fields that were planted earlier have turned very green. The rain showers we've been getting mean that after this the sunflower plants should take off and shade out any future weed growth in the fields.

Leila trying the new lawnmower 

 Garry and I went to Zaporosia and bought a new push  lawnmower Monday morning.  We ended up with a cheaper option than some we looked at, but when we got it home Garry was excited to discover this model has rear wheel drive.  The old one is still working,  but not running really well.

On the way out to the highway we saw that Max had just helped unload the bagger for the new brewers grain we are buying and going to bag up to use all year. This is leftover wet grains from making kavas,  a popular summer drink in Ukraine, and there is a lot of rye grain in it, its higher in fat than the regular kind of brewers grain we have been using that is a byproduct of beer production.

Garry says delivery on the small truck loads we got of the regular stuff weekly had risen dramatically this year, more than tripled, which was one of the reasons why they decided to try the new stuff, along with the analysis the salesman showed him with the high fat content.  Garry tells me that moving the new stuff in the skid steer to mix feed makes the bucket slippery inside.

Garry has been feeding quite a lot of it since buying the first load a couple weeks ago.  With hay,  corn silage and straw supplies running low, he has been feeding just seven bales of hay a day in the milk cows TMR mix. The dry cows and big heifers are getting a mix of straw and this wet kavas grains to eat.

Garry has decided to mow hay. Sunday he said if it keeps raining they would just make silage out of it if they can't bale first cut. He went out with the haybine Sunday afternoon but only got around the field once before he got rained out. The shower didn't last long, so Monday around noon he tried again.

He had checked the weather forecast and decided that the thunderstorms would stay east of us. Around four o'clock it was pouring out and he came home. At least this time he got some mowed down.

We have dry summers here, but often when they are trying to make first cut hay we get into a week or two of showers.  Great for the crops coming up and to grow second cut hay, but it's hard to bale nice dry hay.

 We stopped at the vet-tenka in Zaporosia and got some flea stuff to put on the dogs and cats. Bear and Happy got their doses on Monday afternoon and I got the stuff we bought for Bear's eye infection in the first time (it was trickier to get him to stand still for the second dose, he got a little extra in that time, it was more like an eye wash than four drops). I'll have to put the flea repellent on Box and Needles the next time they come in the house.  With the weather in the 20s,  (70s F) Box has decided to join Needles outside more.

We forgot to buy another heat lamp bulb so the baby turkeys are still in a box in the spare bedroom (there's room with the corn and sunflower seed bags gone). We got six live turkeys from our thirty eggs Garry bought.  Ten tried to hatch, but not all made it out of the shells. Garry ended up helping some.

I had tried moving the oldest four and the three goslings to the box the chicks were in before,  we set it up Sunday afternoon in the little laboratory part of the cheese room but the heat lamp bulb died, and Garry could only buy a 100 watt incandescent bulb in the village.  I checked on them about ten o'clock that night, and the goslings looked warm enough but not the turkeys,  so I carried them back to join the weaker two birds under the desk lamp in the house.

The geese are very happy out there, although the big dark one keeps trying to jump out last night, so I gave them some grass to play with/eat. Garry had bought three goose eggs and all three hatched. Looks like we'll have two white ones and the big guy that hatched first will be some version of gray, I think. 

The sun is shining this morning,  so Garry must be planning to mow more hay. I might do some more yardwork, I've been cleaning up flower beds and organizing the house before I leave for Canada next week. 

I'm looking forward to seeing all the grandkids in person, and holding our new grandbaby. I got to talk to some of them online for Mother's Day on Sunday.