Saturday

Today was rather busy. Garry was out early to move the first wagon of corn silage before making feed. They have two shifts for silage making Max and Andrey (remember the little Andrey who sold brewers grain to the neighbors eight years ago? He's 23) start at six am, Artom and Vlad take over at noon.  Andrey was a little late this morning,  or they changed it up. They only got five loads done by noon, due to a few problems.  Something fell off the chopper and they were searching for it when Garry went out to the field at ten to see if there was a problem since no wagons were arriving to unload.  He said he organized a systematical search and the part was found. Then they had to fix a flat tire on one of the wagons.

At that point, Garry still had to make feed for the heifers and dry cows,  but there was a flat tire on the skidsteer(bobcat) He got it off and in the van, and came in to change his clothes around eleven.

 On a normal day, Garry goes out to make feed at 6 am after coffee and checking the news online. Then he's back for breakfast sometime between eight and nine, depending on what is happening that morning.  This morning he never made it back for breakfast.

He asked me if I'd like to Zaporosia for lunch. He wanted me to get some cash at the ATM or bankomat so he could pay the students the rest of their wages.  Yesterday at pizza night they got only part of their pay.

We dropped off the tire at a shinomontazh, and proceeded across the dam bridge,  which wasn't too backed up with the construction that's ongoing this summer.  We had lunch at McDonald's,  where we discovered a couple blocks of the main street blocked off (see photo) and got cash at the second try at a bankomat (first one didn't have enough cash) the picked up the fixed tire (it had a nail in). I got some photos of the work on the bridge.

We were surprised and pleased to discover that there was a truck filling the holes on the road from the village to the highway with a chip and tar surface.  It was getting worse and hard to miss the many holes. Now if the holes in the main street of the village would get filled,  we'd have it made.

Garry went out to finish making feed, and came back around three with the news that they were combining the sunflowers by the highway this afternoon.  A little sooner than I thought yesterday!

I got a photo around four thirty on our way to Dnepro,  where we met up with Jack,  whose heading off to another VBS camp in Kramatorsk,  and picked up Kolya Mazhara after he helped Jack and Adam with the one this week.  Garry wanted Jack to look at the Morningstar church house, for ideas on the project. Garry wants to organize building teams for spring 2020 to build an addition to make a large meeting room. Jack would like to help remodel a small house in the village for Kolya and family,  so maybe there will be two builds again next spring.

Then we drove back to the village, dropped  off Kolya around seven, paid a few more guys the rest of their wages (not everyone caught Garry earlier in the afternoon) and saw a wagon of corn silage coming up the street through the village cows heading home for the night. We finally got to bed early... like eight pm.

Tomorrow,  church and a trip to Zaporosia with Nikolai to see Alona and Danil at the hospital,  and who knows what else.