A typical week, or an atypical week?

 I was thinking typical, but a few things happened this week that don't happen every week, so...

Monday I spent the day cooking, because we'd decided that this weeks student dinner would be Canadian Thanksgiving, just a week late. Scott and Shannon were doing dinner for the students every other Monday, with Victor translating a little message from Scott, and it was so popular with the students, we decided to keep it up. 

In the summer it was pretty easy, hotdogs over the firepit, some bread and a couple of salads and we had dinner. The first week we were back, we still ate outside, because the students started the campfire, but it was baked beans with ground beef and hotdog pieces and salads. However, we decided it was time to move inside, with shorter days and cooler nights, and we had a feast. I cooked turkey breast (it weighed almost 6 kilos) in the big crockpot, stuffing in the small one, pulled the last of the beets from the garden, made a huge cabbage salad and peeled five and half kilos of potatoes to mash. I had made apple and cherry pies on Sunday afternoon. 

Victor had been feeling quite sick the week before, but he was able to drive out on Monday afternoon and translated Garry's message about being thankful. He also asked them what Hope for Each (our program name) meant, and Nikolai gave the answer he liked best, everyone here has the chance to change their life if they want to work. We told the students to not take more than 2 spoonsful of anything as they headed down the buffet line. They decided the girls could go first, like Scott told them, but they still piled the plates really full, and had trouble eating it all!

Garry was hoping to start combining corn on Tuesday or Wednesday, but the combine didn't get started until after lunch until Wednesday. Last week Max and Garry went to Zaporosia and bought a truck to haul grain. It isn't as old as it looks, only about twenty I think. Max would run the loads into the village to dump them in the Quonset style shed. 

They were a bit disappointed in the small field that had grain corn, although the ears were bigger, it didn't do as well as they'd thought, and it was pretty high in moisture still. The cold wet season is upon us soon, so it wouldn't dry very fast now. However, the corn from the big field yielded  more per acre and was much dryer. That corn was the taller stuff for silage, but they didn't need it all as silage, so some remained to combine. There was so much corn they had to put some in another shed, and Friday afternoon, Garry and some of the guys had to shovel it around to fit it all inside. The company wouldn't buy it right out of the field, but they have already sent away a sample, and hope to have a deal soon, because the price is good now. Most of the crop will be sold. 

Just had to run and check my pie in the oven. Tomorrow is the twins' birthday (Kolya's younger brothers, Vasili and Misha) and Garry and I will be away so I am making their cake today, or a cake for Misha and an apple pie for Vasa, he asked for one last year instead of cake. Misha was gone to trade school the last two years so they weren't together then. We'll have them tonight, after Garry gets back.

Next week is going to be very atypical as Garry and I are off on the Red Sea vacation we had booked for April with the Rempels, who won't be joining us this year. We had delayed as long as possible, but it was go or lose your money (luckily we finally got their money back recently when the tour company resold the tickets.) In order to go, we had to get a Covid test done. That was a bit of adventure on Thursday morning, as we had been given the wrong address. 

We went to 101 Kirova as texted to us, but there was no way into that building without a key card, so Garry called the travel agent. She talked to the office, and sent us a new address, 141 Polda. Garry checked with google maps, it said downtown, 15, 20 minutes away, we followed the directions and it looked all wrong, and we ended up back on Kirova twenty minutes later at #141, there was a medical building tucked in behind the 141 building we could see when we arrived. All we had needed to do was drive up to the other end of the street. Five years ago, when they de-Soviet named streets and cities, Kirova was renamed Oleksander Polya Street, so some people use the old name and some the new, or rather O. Polya, and maybe just call it Polya.

After all that we did get both our noses and back of our throats scraped and Garry paid. As we were driving away, he mentioned that it cost less than the travel agent had said it would be. Twenty minutes later he got a phone call, we had only paid for one test, they said. Eventually he went back in the afternoon when he was doing an English class to pay for mine and realized the price was now higher than the 1800 grinva she had said. Garry tried to understand why it was so expensive. Finally they told him it was only 1800 for residents, not foreigners and Garry said but we are residents and they said okay and he just paid the difference. 

Today he's picking up the certificates of the covid 19 test for getting into Egypt, and he was a little nervous, the results were supposed to be ready at two o'clock. He dropped his empty semen tank off at Victor's house this morning - all week he's been telling people, he's sorry he can't come breed their cow, because the office was not working all week where he buys it, so Victor will buy some on Monday). Anyway, when Victor was sick last week the doctor said he didn't need to get tested for Covid, but he had an antibody test for it this week and it just came back positive. Maybe we wouldn't be going away after all. 

However, we got an email at three o'clock saying we are negative, so Sunday morning we're off to Sharm El Sheikh and the Baron, the hotel the Rempels wanted to stay at. 

And finally, this week the neighbor's chickens decided to stay overnight and sit on either the van or the top of the car. It gets a little messy. Maybe they are really volunteering to get in our chicken pen for the winter. 

Sunday drive

 As we were leaving to walk to the village church Sunday morning, Max stopped in to say that the people had called to say their other cow was in heat. The place where he and Garry had gone the night before. Garry said he'd go after church. 

He told me I could come along on a Sunday drive. Max drew him a map and gave him the people's phone number in case he couldn't find it. It was dark and raining the night before and they were following a car, and Max was driving. I tried to find it on the map today, to see where we went, but it was about a 45 minute drive. That's Garry driving, so an hour for most people!

We couldn't take the field road, since it rained the night before, so he had to take the other highway. It was repaved this summer (they are still working on fixing the overpass over the Dnepro-Zaporosia highway we drive most often) as far as the village we turned off to, one where Garry has bred many cows. 

Garry stopped for a bottle of ice tea at a store in that village, since we'd eaten lunch in the car, and we followed Max's map over good repaved roads and old roads with trees forming a tunnel over them, turning here and there, including around a pond, until we got to the village we were going to. 

Here are a few photos. The black spots on the windshield in the photos is specks of mud from Garry driving to the barn that morning, not flies.

When we got to the village, Garry tried to find the right street, but after two tries returned to main street and the hotel/bar he'd noticed the night before. Here's a few photos in a rather large village.

It turned out the road with the abandoned school was the right road to turn on, we found out as we followed the guy home. Still might not have found it, though. The paved street turned into a track through the field to some houses.

Max told Garry the night before that the tractors with the box on the front are called beggars. With the cow successfully bred, we could go home. The owner, a school teacher, had found Garry through a relative of Max's wife in a nearby village. He said they can't get anyone to come breed their cows, because the village is out of the way from most places. He had told Garry the night before to charge as much as he needed to want to come back for the next cow. 

So all we had to do was retrace our steps back home. Unfortunately, this sign was not as visible a landmark to turn at going the other direction, and we had to retrace a few miles and find it. There were trees hiding it from the other road. Garry told me the name of a head of wheat, but I've forgotten, Koo- something. We knew we were going the right way, after that, past the four cows, around the pond and back to familiar territory and home. 

Catching up

 While I'm still trying to catch up on my sleep (my head is still a bit in Manitoba time) Garry has been catching up on some of the work he wants to get done before the snow flies.

This week they have moved heifers around- the small ones going off drinking milk come over here to the tent barn, while the biggest ones here go over to the heifer barn that was built last year. The guys have been working on the cisterns, the one for the cheese room is ready to get its final cement coating, and on Thursday afternoon the guys poured the concrete lid to seal up the one at Kolya's house.

Friday most of the guys were working on putting the roof over the new part of the hay/straw shed at the new barn, because the steel came on Thursday afternoon, and Garry wanted to get it up before it rained again. He told me he picked up 62 screws off the ground around it when they were done yesterday. We've had a couple of wet days, and several foggy mornings since we returned. Dima with his ever present helper Leila were working on wiring a light and plug in our garage (and cleaning, of course, if you know Leila) at the same time.

The forecast for next week is for cooler, wetter weather, and right now (Saturday evening) there's light rain showers with flashes lightning occasionally lighting up the sky (I know because we just returned from Zaporosia with a student grocery run- every week or two we take them to a big store for cheaper staples and disposable diapers than you can get in the village.) 

It's Leila's birthday today, and she loves a television show with a German shepherd star, so I tried to make her a cake, t shirt and hat with a dog on for her celebration. We sang happy birthday and had cake with the students who were early for our shopping trip. 

Actually, I think it's raining for real now, I can hear it on the roof. Garry is off with Max to breed a cow somewhere. This afternoon he bred seven of our own, a new record for cows in heat in one day in the herd. He hopes to buy more semen on Monday because he's down to a couple doses of the more expensive Jersey semen he bought for people wanting small calves. Usually he uses Canadian Holstein bulls.

In the two weeks we've been back he's driven to the dentist in Dnepro six or seven times, mostly for three students who needed teeth pulled.  One guy needed five pulled, he's got four done and one more to do on Monday. He's smiling, though. A lot of students think a toothache is normal until it's unbearable. Hopefully we'll get everything fixed up.

This past week I started English classes for anyone who wants to come, Tuesday I had six students and Friday only two (but the rest were working). Two year old Daniel comes with his mom and is a bit of a distraction. Wednesday was a full house for the ever popular cooking with Teresa class, we made quick pizza with baking powder. A couple students wanted to try making it this week, and I sent home baking powder and Italian seasoning with Sasha, who said he can't get those in the village. Baking powder comes in  tiny 18 mg packages here (about 4 teaspoonfuls). 

This morning Garry was teaching an English class downtown and I went along to go to my favorite yarn store and shop. We went out for a late breakfast at a bakery/cafe, and when the breakfast sandwich we'd picked wasn't available, Garry picked the most expensive omelet on the menu. We were very disappointed to discover fish inside our rolls of egg! As you can see, I didn't eat all my fish. Garry bought chocolate croissants to get a better taste in our mouth after, but I think we were both tasting that fish all day- it even had bones!

After his class we picked a prospective new student at the bus station, we'll see how his first milking shift goes tomorrow morning when he subs for Oksana, who hurt her foot today.

Jetlag and other problems sleeping

 

It's a different world here in Ukraine, one that's eight hours ahead of the Central time zone; although there are leaves changing color here in the village, like in Manitoba. Saturday Garry was up early after a good night of sleep, and I wasn't far behind him. It's always easy to sleep when you haven't in thirty hours!

He'd already gone to find Max with the parts and Max spent the day repairing the skid steer so the barn could get cleaned properly. Garry checked out lots of stuff, got the milking herd bedded up properly, checked his corn field (not ready to combine yet, too much moisture in the kernels for dry corn). The guys had about two thirds of the winter wheat planted before the rain came. 

He brought some tomatoes and peppers in to the kitchen for lunch from the garden at the other house. Not much left there after a month away, but it has not frosted here yet, so the plants still have a few left on to eat. The flowerbeds look beautiful, i hear Victor took care of them while Garry was gone. It was extremely hot a month ago when Garry left. There's still a good amount of carrots and beets left in the garden, which I started putting in the freezer on Sunday afternoon.

Saturday Garry's phone started ringing, he bred four cows, only one of which was ours. We were supposed to go with Valentina and Angelina shopping at five, no one else planned to go, but the baby needed milk and pampers (actually she bought her huggies, but its what everyone calls any brand of disposable diapers). Valentina is back at work milking cows with her three month maternity leave over for a few weeks now. The other students watch Angelina, usually Misha or one of the girls, that I've seen so far. We left after six, I think, by the time Garry returned from breeding a cow in another village.

We planned to go to church in the village Sunday morning, but after a long sleepless night, we fell asleep around 5 am and when we woke up, Garry was astonished to discover it was 11:30 am! Garry actually slept from maybe ten pm to three am when he woke up and decided to cook breakfast, and started frying eggs, but went back to bed around 5:30. 

We decided to have our first student dinner on Monday evening, and I decided on franks and beans with hamburger in, and a couple salads. I did most of the salad prep Sunday afternoon while cooking and freezing beets. I had asked Garry to dig up some carrots for the oliviah salad, because I couldn't get them out of the ground by pulling (I had pulled the tops off two trying) and he decided to dig up all of them. He'd dumped them in a large container of water, so I spent an hour scrubbing carrots outside, before cooking some for the salad. The rest of the carrots were peeled, blanched and froze Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

Garry slept some Sunday night, but I didn't really sleep until after we watched the Eagles game. It was a Sunday night game back at home, so it was over about seven am! I put the dried beans I'd soaked overnight in the crockpot at seven am and fell asleep until eleven am. Unfortunately, they weren't cooked like I'd hoped and I wanted to get the sauce in so I dumped them out in a pot and boiled the beans while I peeled potatoes for the last salad. Then I browned my ground beef and put all the ingredients in the big crockpot, and boiled my potatoes, while chopping up the onions, pickles, eggs and mixing them with the cubed carrots I cooked Sunday, a  can of corn (traditionally its canned peas, but a couple students prefer corn) and mayonnaise. After lunch I went outside and picked up fallen apples and made a giant apple crisp for dessert, made cornbread and added my cooled potato chunks to the salad. 

Garry and I debated on eating inside or out, he'd decided to do his talk out and eat in, but the students arrived and started a fire in the firepit, so we did eat outside one more time. We started around five, and the sun sets close to 6:30 pm these days. I'm sure we'll be inside in two weeks for our annual Thanksgiving dinner. 

Tuesday afternoon we had our staff meeting at our new kitchen table. Classes will start next week. 

I'm still trying to find things, since we were only in the "new house" (the one the Crawfords lived in) for about ten days before I left for Canada two months ago, but I have made a few changes to make it more like home. I managed to catch Box Tuesday afternoon and brought her inside and she seems to be adjusting to the move after her summer outdoors. Needles is still running in the old house to eat, we had to buy the girls more "corm" (cat food, but really any kind of premade animal food, Bear needs more too). I did have both of the cats eating outside on the porch here earlier in the week, before successfully grabbing her on the first try. 

Garry has already thought of something he wanted to bring that didn't get in the suitcase, he'd gotten Seth to sharpened a couple of old hoof knives to bring back with him and left them in the house (possibly by the door, boys, he still wants them). He realized it Wednesday morning while trimming hooves for a couple cows who were limping. He has a to-do list before it gets cold, finishing the yamas (cisterns they dug early in the spring/summer) finishing the equipment shed (as you can see in the photo it needs a door),  get the roof on the hayshed, and some other things. 

Garry might have slept well last night, he was asleep by nine and still sleeping when I slipped into bed at eleven pm. However, someone tapped on the door, a couple minutes later, and it turned out there was a big problem with the milk pump at the barn. Max had already been trying to fix it for about an hour and half. This is the pump that moves the milk while milking, so the cows weren't getting their night milking, and the backup pump Garry brought back from Canada a couple years ago for when this happened was three phase, so they couldn't use it. Eventually Garry came up with using the small pump they use to pump milk out of the milk tank into the truck when they sell it. So he came home and showered about 2:20 am after the cows were milked. I had woke up at quarter to two, after falling asleep when he dressed and left, wondering where he was, so if it was my night to sleep, it didn't happen either.

Maybe tonight. Although they are still trying to fix that pump, Victor brought out a part, but it seems like its not the solution, Max is still working on it. They are still milking with the pump fix this afternoon.

Just heard from Garry, he says they got it fixed. He's in Dnepro with  two students who needed to get teeth pulled this afternoon. Vasili had one pulled yesterday and one today. Yesterday I went in with Garry and we had to stop at the Apollo mall for something and found some cows while checking out their new addition. 

As you can see, we were wearing our masks.

 

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Back in the village

We landed in Kyiv on time at 1:15, got through customs, Garry picked up our checked bag off the conveyor belt, and after going up and down a couple escalators, found the door you could get outside though (like Toronto, only ticketed passengers can get into the building because of covid). Did not get told to quarantine (it seems Canada is a green country, you just have to prove you have health insurance.)

 Well after a fairly uneventful trip back, Garry is off checking out how things are in the village. He's already bred someone's cow, and Max and the guys are putting the parts we brought into the skid steer. We also brought a chain for the chopper (forage harvester) that weighed 25 pounds in our 50 pound suitcase, so as you might think, we didn't bring a lot of stuff back this trip. Our economy fares did not include a checked bag, so we economized to one 90 dollar checked bag fee going back to Ukraine, on the flights to Canada, we each had one, mine was crocheted Christmas presents, while Garry's was the Crawfords last suitcase. 

That suitcase got a ride to Saskatchewan with our son and his family last weekend and Scott and Shannon picked it up Sunday as they were in the Fort Qu'Appelle area. Garry also brought a few things for Marina and family from her mother in his carry on, a backpack of stuff for Steve and Jo (more stuff they left behind when they returned last year, including lego for the boys. I mailed Maryna's stuff to Calgary after we got out of Garry's isolation, but we didn't get the backpack to Steve and Jo  until Wednesday night as they invited us to dinner and a bed for the night at their new house in Winnipeg before we flew out. 

While they were unpacking their bag of stuff they found a mystery Bible, which Garry had missed while taking out the stuff for Maryna, so they will mail Jenya his Bible! Micah and Crystal were in the city and picked up our car and took it back to the farm. We had a lovely evening with the Harder family (I wonder if they have finished the 1500 piece puzzle we worked on?) and Steve drove us to te airport in the morning at seven am.

Everything went smoothly, Garry was a little bored with four hour layovers between flights in both Toronto and Frankfurt. In Toronto, very few food places are open, so we ended up eating some very basic 10 dollar cheeseburgers for lunch in a very empty terminal, followed by eating the same meal Garry had on the way over in the plane. Air Canada in economy is serving the same cold vegetarian meal for covid protection/prevention? to everyone and eggplant parm really doesn't work as a cold salad. It came with a roll, butter, kale and mango salad and a brownie. Breakfast before landing early in Germany was better, a croissant and greek yogurt.  

Garry found a taxi and agreed on a price to get to the hotel he parked the car at, he chatted with the taxi guy as he drove us there, then I waited with the suitcases while he got the car out of the lot. Unfortunately, the  plug in the cigarette lighter air pump he had brought didn't want to work on the flat slow leak tire so he had to change it before driving out of the lot. It was nice outside waiting, warm and a little damp from an earlier rain, very enjoyable to breathe fresh air after almost 24 hours of mask wearing!

We grabbed drive thru hamburgers and slightly cold fries before hitting the highway and had a pretty good drive back to the village. It was longer than normal, we accidently missed a turn and took a different route that google maps gave us, ironically the way the taxi man had recommended to Garry to drive to Dnepro, but just around dark we found the road construction that had us driving on some interesting detours around the road they were fixing. As we got closer to home, we were going through a good rain, so we were happy to get home. Also happy we'd gotten Mc Donalds before leaving Borispol city as we did not drive by the usual McDonalds stop! 

We got home about 9:30 and had to unlock the door a half hour later when Misha and Vika knocked on the window to welcome us home with hugs.