We're done!

SEI ended on Friday. Everyone enjoyed the last week, although its always busy.

Right now we are resting and relaxing by the pool, by the sea of Azov with a couple of our Canadian fellow teachers. We are mostly hanging out with Clay as we or at least Garry does whenever Clay comes to teach. Bev, a first time teacher has her own room at the hotel,  we see her at breakfast.

Clay and I are both suffering with bad knees, plus I caught the cold Garry had the last week of teaching, so we hang out by the pool mostly. Garry has enjoyed hanging out by the sea with Max Rudei and Yulia and the kids. They went home today and Max's brother Artom brought out Kolya and Oksana Mazhara, and Vasa Mazhara to stay where they were for a few days. The rest of the students will get a turn later in August.

We are looking forward to tomorrow when Victor and family arrive at the sea with Stacy,  Daniel and the kids. She taught the youth program with me for SEI.  We will head back to the village on Friday.  Today we took a taxi to the city center for lunch, just as a storm was just offshore.  The wind was blowing hard.

Tonight Garry and I walked to the midway area of Kiviloka. We are on a quieter street.

There may be something familiar about that sign...

Two weeks done, one to go

The second weekend of SEI is often a good time to rest and charge yourself for the race of the last week. Maybe catch up on the garden, freezing and canning, prepare and refine the lessons you've planned for the final week, or Monday at least.

Garry started announcing early in SEI that his classes could come out on the second Saturday to see the farm, he'd tour them around with tractor and wagon,  like a hayride. It would be from 10 to 4 open house style, I did not need to make food. Then on Monday he invited the staff for later Saturday.  Shannon asked me what she could make to help out with dinner for the team, she volunteered to make potato salad and lemon meringue pies. They are really busy with teaching, garden, canning, Scott preached this morning and they are heading to Canada just four days after institute ends next Friday!

Friday after class we dropped off Esther and Clay by their apartments and made a quick stop for pork shoulder and some other groceries on the way out of the city. We had an impromptu hotdog roast planned for 5 pm with Steve, Jo and the boys at the Crawfords since we haven't met during institute. 

 I decided on pulled pork,  green beans and coleslaw for my part of team dinner. I picked the beans Saturday morning when I picked the cucumbers (those became pickles,  pickle relish- which will be finished later today) and got cut up for the student visitors, I popped popcorn and set up a place for all the food everyone brought while they were out on tour. The first group that is. Between 9:50  and 10:20, maybe 10:30, Garry filled a wagon full of people behind the big tractor and was off on tour. The Crawfords went along, but I had stuff to finish and later visitors to greet.

There were 27 including kids, Scott thought in group #1, they returned about two hours later and they had a picnic in the yard, while Garry was off on the tractor with another 6 or 7 people. By the time he returned we had another family of three here, for the last tour. After taking a few people out to the highway to catch the bus back to Dnepro (not everyone came by car) in the van, which became the tour vehicle because Max needed the tractor and wagon, the guys were baling hay, and had run out of wagons.

The little boy did get a short tractor before they left though. The had driven out in the car they'd just bought and registered that morning,  which was why they were later. Garry came in about twenty to four,  hot and thirsty, with time to run to the store for some kavas, with the team expected at four. Victor drove in with them about 3:50.

Garry took them on a shorter tour, and we had supper and a good time in spite of the flies. We ate dinner outside,  dessert inside,  both with more flies than we wanted.  I got most of them killed indoors later Saturday night.  Too many open doors yesterday!

After everyone left, I let Box out to play after processing my three jars of sweet spears.  She's locked in one of the spare rooms for the last couple weeks after the neighbors thought she'd injured a large chick. Then I worked on SEI stuff until almost one am. Box went back to her bedroom,  and I showered and crawled in bed. Literally, I twisted my knee, and am really limping. 

This morning Garry was up early, made feed for his cows again (he's just on weekends until we're done) then we were off to church in Dnepro with Alona,  baby Danil,  and Dima and Julia.  They were out for visit after going to the city to work a couple months ago. They have asked to come back. It turns out Garry was right when he showed them with numbers and budgeting on the whiteboard that it was better to live in the village. 

Garry's napping after going to two villages to breed cows. He was already dizzy while sitting in church. I think he needs to rest up for the upcoming week.

Here

Quick post

Just leaving to teach soon, so this will be quick.  We've had some rain in the last ten days, the crops continue to look good. The guys have not gotten much straw baled with it raining every couple days, and the hay is ready to do third cut, too.

We just had the annual Canada day at SEI. Garry and were in charge off the special assembly, and are glad to be back to just teaching. Well mostly. We're half  done with SEI. If you are wondering,  Garry dressed as a Canadian farmer.

This week there is a VBS or camp in the village,  these young people were at church on Sunday and are camping out in the church and running the program for the village children. 

Rain and teaching English

Monday morning Garry and I went into Dnepro early with a van full of fans he'd assembled on Saturday for the SEI classrooms.  We had our traditional teaching breakfast at McDonald's and swung by the Canadian teachers' apartments to pick up people and the printer, which they'd been using to set up classes.

It was sunny when we left the village at 6 am, but started to rain in Dnepro when we were eating breakfast.  The Crawfords said it started raining when they were going through the police check.
By midday it was pouring rain outside the building we teach in. The road in front was flooding over the curbs, Garry said when he went out to look.

He was relieved to talk to Max later that day when he found out that they had finished combining on Sunday night. The wheat would not spoil or get mildewed in the field. Our loads are still getting graded #2, and they are loading trucks night and day from the storage shed. They will keep some for the people who get goods instead of cash for rent, and sell the rest. The price will be as good as it will be for months, right now it will keep going down because they will be harvesting the fields north of us.

The sunflowers will be ready to combine in a month and they will need to store some of those in the building. In the village we got six-tenths of an inch of rain Monday and a little Tuesday night around midnight,  so they are not baling straw again today.

There are over 200 students between adults and youth at SEI this year.

Garry is enjoying teaching his tedtalk class with discussion with the theme of success.

He did have an exciting start to his day Tuesday when we realized as we got to the institute that his computer bag with all his materials had been left in the village.  He made a very fast trip home to get it and was only ten minutes late for his first class. We'll be very careful to check every morning that we have everything now!

I am teaching youth classes with Stacy Dantsev and having fun with 12 to 15 year olds. We were doing an exercise where one student would describe a photo in a magazine while another drew on the chalkboard that they really enjoyed yesterday.

Almost done and getting started

The combine guy was back at it today after the latest rain delay. Garry was hoping he'd finish today,  but he didn't quite finish. The problem is the wheat is too good, so he's combining half the speed he was last year. Tomorrow the forecast is calling for rain, more in Dnepro (where we'll be in day one of Summer English Institute), less for the Zaporosia forecast (and we really are closer to Zaporosia), so we'll see what happens.  Maybe they will be able to get done before it gets wet again. Some have it raining tonight,  some for the morning.  The Dnepro forecast has dropped from three inches to one in the last 12 hours. But remember that rain is always good, it saves us money because we don't have to buy water for the cornfields. Of course, ideally it wouldn't rain until the combine has finished the wheat harvest!

Our corn is looking good as you saw in yesterday's post, but the former vegetable farmer whose been growing irrigated corn for the last couple years had some of his go down when we had the thunderstorms on Tuesday.  It's right next to the old alfalfa field. 

Neighboring field 

The storm had a good deal of wind with the rain. A few miles away there was hail during an earlier storm while Victor was driving home from the village.  We were driving home from Dnepro around 9:30 in the car and I took this video.

the video took way too long to upload, believe me it was dark, raining hard and you could feelthe wind was blowing us on the road and we were in the car, which picks up less wind than the van. Plus lightning streaking across the sky. 

So we'll be in Dnepro for every  day almost for the next three weeks,  teaching English.  This year I'm teaching youth (12 to 15 year olds) and Garry is teaching adults (16 and over).

A side note from last Tuesday afternoon's post, it turned out the North Americans we met at the hotel for breakfast that Garry assumed were our afternoon tour group were not the group that showed up here that afternoon.  Thanks to the Mennonite group with the Dutch leader for the gift for the ministry.  

Here's the truck being loaded with wheat to sell. Nubalon is the name of the company that buys our wheat.  It buys a lot of the wheat and sunflowers sold in Ukraine. Max is putting some long days in staying up most of the night loading the truck and then getting up in a couple hours to load it again so it can be on the road before ten am. 

Ready, set, go!

This morning when got up, we found that it had rained again.  It looked pretty gray out, so I went out to pick my cucumbers in the garden. I got pretty wet, as it started raining as I got to the first cucumber row. My feet were a glob of sticky mud before I was done.  I wanted to make one more batch of pickles before teaching at SEI next week.

Garry was happy with the rain showers,

even though we had 4 tenths of an inch Tuesday, and another 2 tenths Wednesday night. He always says in Ukraine you can never have too much rain. However the rain has been kept the combine from working.  There is still a quarter of the wheat acres to harvest. It continues to be a great crop. They were finally able to get a truck  to sell wheat on Wednesday after the rain came. They loaded up a semi from the storage shed, and have been selling some  ever since. The first load graded #2 and was 10% moisture.  They were able to combine again on Friday,  and got more straw baled, after a  couple days off.

Max took advantage of the slightly wetter wheat harvested Friday and mixed it with the dry stuff to sell. There is no premium for dry  grain, so they are hoping to get closer to 14% moisture.  They need to sell wheat to pay for the water bill for irrigation, and other things. Thursday  afternoon Garry and Max went to look  at a new grain drill to buy.
Max is having some very late nights as the trucks are only allowed on the highway from ten pm to 10 am,  so he's loading them at night. He said he was just finished with one Friday around three am when it really poured.

If you're wondering if paying to put water on the corn I'd worth it, check out the photo below. I took it this evening after we watched Kolya Mazhara play soccer.  That's just Garry standing in the corn field. 

We also checked the third cut alfalfa,  they did not get as much on the irrigated alfalfa as they'd like,  because they had to get so much on the corn.

Here's the one that relies on the rain, you can see it's much shorter and thinner.  The weather forecast for next week is wet and cooler. Hopefully they are able to get the rest of the wheat off before quality drops too much.

Ten years

Ten years this week we moved to Ukraine, with two boys and eight suitcases. Victor picked us up in Kiev in the big blue van, I remember I couldn't stay awake as we drove toward our new home in the village for hours. Jonah and I talked about how it would be great if we could just read the billboards. Ten years later and I can usually figure out what they are about anyway.

Garry and the boys got started on the renovation of the house while I taught at Summer English Institute in Dnepro a week later. This year Garry and I are both teaching English (Garry started 6 or 7 years ago) and Seth and Jonah have been back in Canada for years.

I featured a new post from the past that talks about our first year in Ukraine, you can click on it toward the top right side of this page.

It's also our wedding anniversary so Garry and I have been in Zaporosia for two days and nights, eating out and working on our lessons for teaching English. In a couple hours we are back in the village to see how wheat harvest, straw baling and corn field watering it going (the hay field was irrigated over the weekend). Last night we had our anniversary dinner, Garry picked spicy pizza and I choose the pickled herring, potato and onion dish to share, we each ate more of the dish we picked!

 Garry has been working on adding fertilizer with the water on the corn fields. That and straw will be taking up his time this afternoon, along with a group on a Mennonite tour, while I deal with the cukes and beans that need picking and pickling when we get back to the house after two days away.