Rainy days and Monday

 It has rained every day since it warmed up last week. Which means that there's mud everywhere! Sunday morning we drove Yana, her mother and nieces to the bus station in Zaporosia so they could go home to the their village after visiting Yana since school would start on Monday. Yana's driveway was quite muddy as they got in the van on the street, in front of her new white fence. Garry says he has no trouble remembering which house is her's now. 

We bought Yana lunch at McDonalds on the way home. We were surprized to see how tall her older niece is now, taller than her grandma!

Garry is getting back to his normal routine, breeding cows- I think he bred four the first day back in the village and contines to breed some almost everyday, ones in our barn and for other people in Nikoliapolia and surrounding villages. On Monday we headed into Dnepro early to meet up with Victor because he needed more frozen bull semen. He had no Holstein semen left, and only two straws of Jersey. He has to charge more for Jersey because it costs more to buy, he tries to break even on the cows he breeds for other people; we get the Canadian semen because we can and besides everyone knows we're the Canadians.

We left shortly after eight am when I woke up (I am still fighting jetlag, that night I fell asleep about four in the morning). We went to Nova Lenya first because Victor was busy with family so we'd meet him in a while. We were able to finally shop in-store with the lockdown restrictions ending. Garry wanted to purchase a new saw so the guys could cut the lumber to make trusses for a new heifer barn like the one we built two years ago. We found a few other things that we had wanted to buy since our return two weeks ago. The kasa (checkout) took a while because both of our bank cards wouldn't work when we tried them, so Garry had to use cash. 

 We met Victor on the other side of the river and after a stop to change some US dollars- they needed cash to pay for the semen and we'd used what he brought for it buying the saw- followed him to the place where they buy liquid nitrogen to fill the tank (that's how the semen stays frozen) and then to the place where the Canadian-Ukrainian Dairy Commission is to buy the semen. I messaged the guy Garry was supposed to meet at eleven am that we'd be at the cafe at noon instead. 

Garry was doubting we'd get there in time but we did, the cafe seemed business as usual, there were people at nearly every table, even a couple young mothers out with their babies. Garry bought us kakao, as it's often close to hot chocolate from home, I drank mine by just pulling my mask up. This one, while pretty, was rather bitter since they'd dusted the top with cocoa powder to make that heart on top. Every place seems to have a different recipe, and if it says hot chocolate it's usually melted chocolate. 

We went through the KFC drivethru for lunch on the way home, we'd both skipped breakfast and we'd never stopped to get any because it didn't work out that morning, so Garry had two chicken sandwiches.

Tuesday Garry was busy all day figuring out the truss stuff so Dima, Vasa and Nikolai could cut the lumber. They had to clean the last of the corn out of one side of the quonset first so they could work in there. Wednesday we planned a trip to Kirvoy Rog to see Adam and Luba, we had brought some Canadian foods back they wanted in our suitcases. More on that in my next post, and photos of the guys working.