Combine came but not the rain

Technically it did rain enough to stop combining Saturday afternoon,  but not enough to make a difference to the sunflowers.  We've had some clouds and just missed some rain showers (some fell 30 km away). Dry weather is good for combining the wheat, although the blooming sunflowers and the alfalfa could really use some water.

The combine finally arrived on Thursday and has been going over since. The hot dry weather in June meant the grain kernels could have been a little bigger, but this is still the best winter wheat crop we've grown in Ukraine. The combine driver estimates 85-90 bushels per acre.

 Better management and that better than normal spring gets the credit.  Artom and the students are keeping busy baling straw, they finished with the gifted barley straw yesterday.  They have Sunday off before getting back baling wheat straw. Garry tells me that there is three or four times as much straw in the wheat fields.  Better fertilizer is my guess. 

Baby Danil watching mom and dad
 work moving wheat in the shed

They were unable to get the big trucks from Nebulon, the company that buys grain, so they could sell it right out of the field,  so it's going in the shed for now. They plan to sell most of it right away, we are spending 10,000 grivna a day for water on the corn.

We were not home Thursday to see them start, as our friends Steve and Jo and boys were flying into Kiev and couldn't find any train tickets to buy back to Zaporosia.  We left the village with the van around nine am, and discovered that some, or most of the roads in worse condition than usual for summer. There were some huge holes, about a half hour before the airport there was a thunderstorm and the van wipers don't work. We got there in plenty of time. We bought some turtlewax product that was supposed to help bead water off the windshield.  Garry googled how to apply it in English (instructions were in Ukrainian and Russian). It did work because when we picked them up, thunderstorm two hit Borispol (Kiev airport).

 The rest of the trip went okay, except for the holes in the road, which were harder to miss after it got dark after our nine pm stop for dinner at McDonald's.  Unfortunately we blew apart one tire and had to change it with about 30 km to go to the better roads. It was about one o'clock when we left them at the apartment building in Zaporosia,  and close to  two am when we got to bed.

Garry was still up making feed for the cows at 6 am Friday morning.