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.
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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