A little more

By this morning there was another 13mm (around half an inch) in the rain gauge, and Saturday has been a mix of bright sunshine, cloud and occasional pouring rain.  This afternoon we drove to Salonie to buy salt blocks (for the cows) and some tomato plants and vegetables- including fresh strawberries at the outdoor market. Big drops started falling on our heads as we finished our purchases.

For lunch I left footprints in the garden- and saw a hedgehog curled up in the grass- picking spinach for lunch. It started pouring just before I went out. The last two days we enjoyed a spinach salad with beets, walnuts and cheese, but tomorrow it will be a spinach strawberry one. (Turns out they went bad overnight, so no salad)

It didn't rain until we were back in the village, even though we were driving toward some spectacular clouds on the way home.

We stopped to get a better photo of the wheat field by the highway as you turn into the village. I thought the one in the last post was over-zoomed so you couldn't really see the wheat.

Garry always says it can never rain too much here in Ukraine for the crops, but it may slow down spraying for weeds if it keeps it up. However, he says there aren't too many weeds in the fields and with the way the corn and sunflowers are growing they may canopy over and shade out the weeds.

I took a photo in the worst sunflower field- I'm told they spread manure on it and plowed it in the spring, the other fields were plowed and cultivated once last fall, so they were smooth and came up nicely, while this one has some plants just coming out of the ground. Mostly I took it because its right next to the barn and Garry decided since it was wet Friday morning we could check cows.

I also took a photo of the little Kubota tractor that came from Canada in the shipping container, the bobcat (which also was donated from Canada) was broken and they used the Kubota to clean up the aisles in the barn. It took almost a week to fix the bobcat, they had no trouble finding suitable bearings but had to get the housing for them rebuilt at a shop, and it didn't fit the first time they tried it. 

Well this post got interrupted, I had been writing while Garry was off for the weekly shopping trip on Saturday night with the students. Valentina had wanted to go so I volunteered to stay home with Angelina, since it seemed easier than taking a two and a half week old baby shopping. Everyone still needs masks to go in the stores. This was the point when she woke up from her nap, and needed changing, bathing and feeding. Just as I got her settled back in her chair, Vika, Alona, little Danil and new Sasha showed up and hung out, so that was it for Saturday night.

Garry reported that just as they returned home from Zaporosia, the far side of the village had a huge downpour and water was running in the street over there. Here, not so much, our off and on rain yesterday amounted not a lot, but it's pretty muddy in the garden.

So it's Sunday morning and Garry is out so I'm typing again. Here's Garry's fish story. Last week people were catching fish next to the road going to the barn where it goes between the ponds. 

 According to Vova, this is the first time in three years that the fish in the pond got trapped up in the reeds when we had the inch of rain. It only happens when the pond level rises and falls again quickly. Here's some photos Garry took Friday around noon. It had been two days since the big rainstorm, so it's amazing most of the fish were still alive. They took the little live fish and released them back into the pond, and Yana and Vova took the dead ones home to feed to the cats. 

Crop report- end of May

You know that the corn crop is up and the guys have been busy installing the drip line set up to irrigate the two fields. It's not quite ready to use yet, but we had an inch and half of rain so far this week. The sunflowers are up and looking good, they will enjoy every drop of rain because they do not get extra water. All of these photos are from last week before the rain came. The fields are too muddy to drive to now, unless they are by the highway.

You know the alfalfa field was harvested as haylage instead of dry hay because of the overcast/chance of rain weather from the end of last week until now. I did get some photos of one of the last wagons dumping in the bunk on Sunday. The pile got packed and covered Sunday afternoon. You can see that the wagons dump over sideways. They were having trouble getting the wagons to empty when the started, because the machine was cutting way too long. Once they realized that there was a missing/broken piece, they fixed it and it worked so well they are thinking they will chop the wheat (I think its 12 acres) they were planning to cut early and turn into hay so they can try double cropping corn for silage next to the alfalfa field. 

That's still a little ways off, but you can see heads developing in the wheat fields now. 

Anyway, it's good that it rained, I was hoeing in the garden on Monday and it was so dry the ground was cracking by the onions and Garry has watered the garden with the sprinkler a few times. It's also good that the frost on Friday night was not too hard on the crops. it would be impossible to replant the crop with the driplines already in the ground.

Hoping for Rain

Back on the weekend, we were hoping for rain-

 and good internet- ours went down for half an hour Sunday afternoon while we were in the middle of a zoom meeting (close to the end of Garry's Bible story) with one of the schools in Dnepro we normally visit once a month! The teacher, Lena, solved the problem by phoning and putting him on speaker phone next to her computer! Quarantine has made everyone into problem solvers. The quarantine has been relaxed some, restaurants are open for patio dining now. Mc Donald's stuck stickers on the outdoor tables and chairs you shouldn't sit in for social distancing rules. The internet returned before Garry's next zoom call and the one with his brothers, sisters and father.

Angelina meets Box Tuesday morning

Monday night I was wondering if the baby crying would wake me up as I wrote the previous post. I have not heard her so far, unless I am somewhat awake. She does wake up her mother, though, she seems to take her longest sleep time in the morning. Right now I am hoping she sleeps a while longer, since I am watching her while Max takes Valentina and Oksana to Zaporosia to register for baby benefit payments (somehow no one has gotten Oksana signed up since September).

Opps, I hear Angelina now. After a diaper change and some formula, she's sitting in the vibrating chair Garry bought her last night, although I had to put some hand towels beside her to keep her upright. See seems happy, although she has the hiccups.

Anyway what woke me up at three am (early Tuesday morning) was a big crack of thunder. We got a half inch of rain from that storm. Max said he woke up at the same time and went out the hayfield to turn off the irrigation they had started on Sunday when they finished chopping haylage.

 Tuesday morning the DHI test lady came and spent most of the day enrolling all the cow information into her computer with Yana's help and the book they write the calvings and breeding in, now all the information will be up to date when they do monthly milk testing and Garry will know how many cows need to be bred or are pregnant and how much milk they give in a lactation, too. Monday afternoon they took samples and wrote down milk amounts for the second time.

Garry kept looking for more free water for his crops, because there was rain all around us on Wednesday, but it only sprinkled in the village. We drove through some rain going to Dnepro in the late afternoon, and there were puddles in the road there. Garry was disappointed when we arrived back in Nikolaipolia, as it was dry. Max had even turned the water back on the alfalfa field.

However, last night Garry was the one awake and listening to the rain fall at three am,  this morning there was an inch in the rain gauge when he checked. It will be a while before they will need to irrigate now, saving money. It costs about 400 dollars an acre for water to grow corn plus 300 more for the fuel to pump it. They need about 14 inches of water for the season. The cost for alfalfa is similar, it's a bit more for the fuel, since it is not dripline there, but put on with the "gun."  An inch of rain saves us three thousand dollars, Garry tells me.

I'm up

It's almost midnight and I'm awake because Valentina is up changing the baby's diaper. She has a good set of lungs. Valentina seems to have cleaning up poopy pants well in hand, so I figured I'd write a quick post. They came home from the hospital late this afternoon, Max had to go get her since he had brought her there, according to regulations. Baby's papa Andrey came out from Dnepro for the occasion, he carried her in from the car, and then Garry got to hold her.

A parade of visiting students came- almost all the girls and a couple guys. They smelled Valentina's welcome home pizza and we gave out small slices in the end. Alonya brought her baby bath tub, she'd already cleaned up a stroller she had and sorted through her baby clothes for gender appropriate ones for Angelina.

Today I did some hoeing in our garden and the Crawfords. Found we had more frost damage than I thought when I looked yesterday. It frosted Saturday night, Garry had checked the cornfield Sunday  and didn't see too much damage he said. However. we had some frosted leaves on tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers and a little on the sweet corn. May have lost a couple tomatoes, peppers and definitely a few cucumbers that had just come up last week, but still lots left. The Crawford's three tomatoes were fine. It has never even been close to frosting this late in May ( or just in May) in eleven years we've been here. The village has been talking about the cool, late spring this year for a while.

Well baby is fed and quiet now so I'm off to bed. As expected, Garry slept though the crying on the opposite side of the house.

Week of busy bees

Well last Sunday night we discovered that Valentina had not seen the baby since she was born. Valentina is very shy with strangers, and like most of our students, doesn't trust authority figures. The hospital staff thought that if she wasn't talking to them, they couldn't leave the baby with her.

Monday morning, Victor, Max and Garry went to the hospital to talk to them. They were there for hours, but finally after talking to several people, including a doctor, they promised to put the baby with her.  When they were asked which of them were Valentina's father, Max replied "all of them". They told them there was a possible problem with the baby's heart that had been noted on Valentina's last ultrasound. The baby wasn't allowed to cry too much before the specialist appointment yesterday. Fortunately, there doesn't seem to be a big problem and they are finally cleared to come home on Monday. They couldn't process the paper work in time to get out Friday, we were told. We did get Valentina to send us a photo of Angela in her new hat and onesie we bought on Thursday. Valentina says that Angela eats and sleeps, so that sounds like a baby!

So everyday we drive to Zaporosia to drop off a bag of lunch and stuff Valentina needs (like baby wipes, bottles- we are worried that breastfeeding is not going well after the delay). Yesterday we went later in the afternoon and had a problem with the van so we returned home for the car, but got there after five, and the office that takes things up to the rooms was closed. If there wasn't a quarantine, the normal procedure is the patients would come out to see you and get the bag. So this morning I got to drive into the city with yesterday's bag. I stopped at a grocery store to try to find a better nipple for the bottle as requested and ended up buying a third bottle since there wasn't any without bottles. Hopefully they like this one, it looked like the right kind. She said the milk was coming out too fast.

So we have also been on bee watch, Victor spilt the hives from two to four and there was a mix-up on queens, one hive has an extra, so they will maybe kill one or she might fly off with a bunch of her subjects. The weather wasn't good on Tuesday, so Victor couldn't get in and try to fix things. So far, so good, but we'll see. Or not, they sometimes sneak away.

This week Garry and Victor also fixed upstairs, where the attic wall blew off this spring. No one fell off the ladder, but I heard they were more worried about a number of hornet nests up there while they were working.

It's really busy in the fields, they are still installing drip line, now they are connecting everything to the big hoses, which takes a while. They threw away some of the big hoses and are replacing it with new. Wednesday Thursday I cooked a big lunch for the guys working. Garry was mowing hay, by the time I collected him and we found the guys Max had just brought them bread and baloney, so they were pretty full with hotdogs, macaroni with tomato sauce and cabbage salad and dessert by the time they were done. Most of them still had seconds, although the bread I sliced to go with lunch mostly come home. We're still using it for toast.

They were hoping to make dry hay, but Friday morning they decided they'd have to turn it into haylage. The old chopper is hanging together so far, although the pieces are pretty long going in the bunk. It wasn't the nicest looking hay to begin with between alfalfa weevils and spring weeds.

Friday was Alonya's birthday and I made her a cake (she wanted Canadian chocolate) and we dropped it off before leaving on our unsuccessful trip to Zaporosia. We had bought her present she wanted on Wednesday since the shops were open in Zaporosia. She loves doing beadwork pictures, and we know to buy a big one we might want to keep, because it's the making not the keeping she wants!

The quarantine is phasing down a bit, so the students (with masks on) are hoping to go to Zaporosia to the mall for groceries tonight, and Garry has agreed, as long as the van is roadworthy. This morning he had a group of students go clean up the village church yard, the pastor hopes to have a service next week. Two months worth of grass and weeds were pretty tall. The students painting the well have been busy all week making a picket fence for a lady in the village, it's almost ready to install. They even have a second person interested in buying a fence.

Garry was breeding a cow last week when the lady asked if they could make her a fence like the ones they built for Kolya's house. He's been really busy breeding cows this week, three different days he's bred eight cows, tying his record for a day here in Ukraine. A couple times we bred cows on the way to or coming home from bringing Valentina's bag to Zaporosia. This lady was very pleased with the calf she had this spring.

Catching up with baby

Tuesday morning Max arrived to take Valentina into her doctor's appointment. Baby was due in two weeks but she was having back pains, so we sent her suitcase with her, just in case. He took her to the hospital where Oksana went, but it is closed for quarantine. A lady there yelled at him for bringing all these pregnant girls there first. Poor Max, he understands the language, so he has become the driver of choice. Anyway, he found a hospital that would keep her, it's quite nice looking.

Baby did not arrive Tuesday, on Wednesday afternoon we dropped off a bag of stuff she forgot to pack and a bag of disposable diapers for her. With the quarantine, you have to leave it with a lady by the door. We had to look on facebook for Valentina's last name to write it down for her.

Anyway, Valentina phoned Thursday morning to say the 8 pound 2 1/2 ounce baby GIRL arrived the night before! We think her name is Angelena or Angelika, we've heard both versions. Yes, we were under the impression it was a boy, but all the students are excited that it is a girl baby.

The plan is they will stay at our house, Garry never had any problem sleeping through crying babies before, so it should all work out. No news on when they can come home, Max had a lot of phone calls yesterday from government officials about whether she had a nice place to live with the baby.

Catching up crop version

As usual, so busy I haven't written. This week the guys have been putting the drip lines in the corn fields, and I have been making them field lunches, after a mix up on Tuesday, when they didn't get lunch. Garry bought them some snacks at the store when he brought them ice tea in the afternoon though. Today they are connecting the lay flat (think firehose sized lines) to the little drip lines (like little soaker hoses just underground), so I made them lunch again, while trying to get our expense paperwork done. Here's some photos of the two Sashas working on the drip line yesterday with Max on the tractor. Young Vlad wasn't around that day to drive.

The hay is almost ready to cut, it won't be long, although the forecast has varied amounts of rain in again, mostly like last week, so more clouds than water. I think last weeks total was less than half an inch, if that. Sunday is supposed to be the best chance for real rain. The winter wheat is almost coming out in head, rain would be nice for it too. 

The canola fields along the highway are looking less yellow in person now, not sure you can tell in the photo, although a few that started blooming later are still brilliant yellow. 

We've had a couple cool mornings this week, but no frost on our tomato and pepper plants in the garden. I managed to give away about 20 pepper plants to Yana after our staff meeting on Tuesday, so we have less to plant now.

Wednesday afternoon Garry had two cows to breed in villages on the way to Zaporosia, the first one was hard to find the right house and right street to find the cow. Power was out for maintenance work that day in our village, and when Garry tried to call to get directions (standard operating procedure for not sure which place he was at last year) after getting to Novapetrovoka (across the highway) phone service was emergency only, then just as we were going to wait until we came back, the call worked but not well. It was cutting in and out as the guy tried to give him directions to his house (apparently he talked fast and slurred to add to the problem).  Eventually we drove up and down main street and he walked out to find us. He had a lot of baby ducks inside his gate, wish I had a photo of them, Garry said there were even more by the barn where the cow was tied.

Where oh where do we go?

The second village, Nadiya, Garry knew which place it was, so it was easy to find. The old people there both put masks on when we arrived.

That evening we were trying to do a skype call with the Crawfords at seven pm when the cows came home in the village and Garry had more cows to breed. It seems like he inseminates a couple every day in Nikolaipolia or another village, plus one or two in our barn now.  It's iris blooming time in the villages and cities now. So many shades of purple and yellow.

This week we were waiting at a stoplight in Dnepro when we noticed two farmer themed vans in front of us. Seeds and feed I think.

Building and rain

Not huge amounts of rain, but Monday afternoon work on the building stopped late afternoon when a thunderstorm came up. It also rained small amounts Sunday night and Tuesday overnight. It has been cloudy and looking like it might rain all week, with periods of bright sunshine mixed in.

Monday morning the girls painted our gate... until they ran out of paint. We need to buy more for them to finish. That load of clothes on the line was my one load that got a rainwater rinse Monday afternoon, but they were dry Tuesday by noon.

Victor was out Monday and Tuesday and was helping Garry and the guys with the building. The rest of the posts went up Monday morning and since then they have been nailing boards on them to frame the building up. Here's some photos of the guys working.

Here's the two guys Victor and I patched up when they weren't looking- or maybe they did look up- when a board fell off. Victor was standing between them and didn't get hurt.

Andrey got a cut on his forehead

 Everyone declared they looked like they'd been in a fight. No stitches, one black eye and one cut forehead. I found the neon green band-aids! Victor applied peroxide and antibiotic cream and ice, and they went back to work. The lady next door likes to sit and watch them build.

Tuesday they were back at work, in the morning, Garry, Victor and Nikolai were squaring things up and nailing boards on.

And use the chain saw to cut it off

In the afternoon they did the higher work, and Garry stayed on the ground. Max, Nikolai and Andrey (who came out from the city with Victor) were the guys climbing and nailing.

 I was busy baking a cake, and repotting more pepper plants in the afternoon. Around five pm we walked the birthday cake over to Kolya's new house to deliver it to Dima, who was 24 yesterday, the party and the kittens were there.

 Garry and I both got to hold little Matthew- who cried, he's old enough to notice you aren't Uncle Misha, who had been holding him, and took the photo of me.

PS Scott and Shannon we solved the weeds in the chicken pen, Kolya has chickens to tend now, we got some from Yana.

Monday afternoon Garry bought a half dozen old laying chickens from somebody driving past with a loudspeaker, hoping they start laying too. Oksana is scrambling eggs for little Matthew, whose almost nine months old now.