Four more days...or three?

 

Four more days of self isolation... Yup, I am even tired of unlimited crochet and Netflix! Yesterday I watched Matthew's church service on YouTube live, and had one family of visitors in the afternoon. We talk out of the living room window. Most days someone drops by for a little chat, or drops something off if they go to town. Saturday afternoon there was a thunderstorm that piled some little hailstones on the deck.

Garry video chats with me a couple times a day. He says it's nice because I am always available. Normally when I get home, I am busy hanging out with the grandkids or driving to Morden to hang out with our granddaughter there, he says.

He's been busy. The plan to start making corn silage on Friday got delayed by having to fix things... Like the machine that chops the corn! The forage harvestor didn't make it more than twenty feet the first morning before they spent the day repairing it. 

Saturday morning they were up at six am again and this time it didn't work much longer. They needed some "half moon keys" to fix it this time, and didn't have any on hand.  The part was not available to purchase in Ukraine, so Garry bought a piece of metal and they used a grinder to make some, and it worked.

That afternoon they were able to chop three loads while testing the machine, and were ready to get started for real. 

So Sunday morning at six am they started again and this time they kept the machine going until five pm, when they had a flat tire on one of the wagons. 

It's an old machine from Canada, and Garry brings parts for it in his suitcase. In fact, the Crawfords brought parts for it when they came in July. Last week Max was cobbling together the best pieces of old gathering chains and welding a better chain because the one on the chopper was so bad that they wished they'd replaced it. It's a really heavy part to go in your suitcase.

So they have gotten a couple days in, Garry starts in the morning with neighbor Andrey driving wagons back and forth between the field and the barn where the silage bunker is. Around one o'clock the second crew of Rudei's take over. Garry tells me that he thinks there is more crop than last year, maybe sixty percent more. He thinks the fertilizer was applied more evenly this year which helped it be good all over the field.