We are sick/updated

To be exact, Garry is quite sick. He wasn't feeling too bad over the weekend, but had a cough that was a little worrying. Victor and Dasha booked him an early morning appointment for a Covid test, I woke up around 6:30 am (inspite of the fact that time changed this weekend) and sent him off. I was feeling a little achy with a headache.

He was home around 9:30, totally wiped out and took a nap. In fact, sleeping and sitting in the recliner watching television is about all he's doing. He got his results on the internet this morning and they are positive. He is not that sick, but has a fever, and coughs a lot if he gets up, walks or talks. Now to keep everyone out for a while, and hopefully recover. I am going in for a test tomorrow morning, because if he has it, I probabally do, and if I'm resding it correctly, a positive test, more than two weeks and less than three months before flying into Canada means you are exempt from the airport hotel stay, and I am supposed to be there in May for the baby. The only upside to being in Ukraine and catching the virus. 

Victor flies to Canada tomorrow for six weeks, so we will have to depend on everyone else. Max brought Garry some pills for if his fever is really high this morning, but so far he's just been taking tyneol. Meanwhile, the bees say spring is here.

Garry is still feeling about the same, not very good unless he sits or lays very still!(then he doesn't cough) However, he's not any worse, although he's had an upset stomach since yesterday.  After lying around most of the day he tried to sneak out of the house to check out the warmer weather this afternoon, but after some soup he's watching Netflix. I drove to Dnepro this morning and got a covid test done for fifty dollars, same place as Garry, results on Saturday. I still seem to have a pretty mild case, but I was ready to nap when I got back.

Manic Monday and then more snow

 

So Monday morning Garry had an appointment in Dnepro to buy more semen to breed cows, luckily not many of our cows had been in heat, and he only had one cow to breed for someone else since Thursday as he was out of Holstein and had to breed them with the Jersey semen.

 He said that lady sold him her big red heifer calf, she couldn't understand why her black cows would have a red calf. We've had some red calves lately, he must have been using a red carrier bull nine months or so ago. Red is a recessive trait in Holsteins. Garry has been buying a lot of calves lately, because the price of milk is high so people would rather sell the calf instead of feeding it milk they could sell. He has always told people he will buy heifer (female) calves from the cows he breeds with that good Canadian bull genetics. 

So I decided to go with him because I knew we'd get Mc Donalds for breakfast since we had to meet Victor across the river in Dnepro (Left bank) before eight am. In spite of the fact that Garry had taken a phone call the night before and a lady from the Morningstar church in Dnepro was coming out with one ro more of her kids and would spend the night and the spare room with the bunk beds was piled in stuff that needed to be moved elsewhere. Anyway some photos from Dnepro, we got the semen first after meeting Victor. Then we bought more liquid nitrogen, not from the usual place, they were out, but from around the corner. Garry and Victor also ordered a load of plywood for building trusses (and the palace chicken coops that they are building for two of the student couples- there are photos later in this post.) They had seen a place selling it near where we get the liquid nitrogen.

We did get back to Mc Donalds around the circle on the right side of the river around 9:30 and they were still serving breakfast. Garry had forgotten to stop on the way in and I had assumed he was running late so I didn't ask. But I got a Fresh McMuffin, the one made for Ukraine, a sausage Mc Muffin (no egg) with cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayo.

So we got home and I got busy. We actually have room for the twin bed we took to the other house, but I put my clothes drying rack back up in that spot after the visitors left. It was a bit of chaos when they arrived as Garry was gone. She had a little trouble finding the village- the road sign on this side of the road has disappeared this winter. He was driving back to Dnepro to pick up a new student, Losha, that Karina (former student now in Kyiv, having finished rehab for alcohol, she's doing really well now). Vika had come in with her on the phone to talk to Garry. 

Anyway, Olya arrived with her three youngest kids, and a pile of food, eager to talk with Garry, who got back home much later. I went out to feed Bear and found her and the kids with Victor. She decided to go back for the kids bikes, leaving me with the kids, two adventurous boys and a quiet little girl, whom Bear really loved. Maybe remembering good times with his former family. When Garry did get back I told him the two boys were eager to see the big cows at the barn and I'd keep the little girl, who'd decided to stay in the house. I'd been running in and out to check what they were doing.

Anyway it was crazy busy day, and Garry was up late (for him) talking with Olya. In the morning, there was snow on the ground, which melted away by noon, but it kept the kids in the house. We had our staff meeting in the office room at ten, since it's Victor's last week out before he and Lena are going to Canada next week for six weeks with the new grandbaby- and the rest of the family there.

Around eleven the family went with Garry for a barn tour, hooftrimming session (apparently the older boy climbed the water tower, which worried Garry, and it takes a lot to worry Garry; while I made stir fry and rice for lunch and continued working on Alona's final curtain for the house. They even got a picture of the students working on the chicken coops.

They went home later in the afternoon, and I was a little surprised by reading in her facebook post that I was a quiet, humble obedient wife, I am not sure Garry would agree with that!

Wednesday morning we had another white world that melted by noon. It makes a mess of the porch with all the muddy boots coming in.  I finished my curtain project and around noon we took a trip to Dnepro to buy some building supplies and a curtain rod before the city lockdown started. We followed this car through the KFC drivethru. Seems like he's a long way from Chicago. You sometimes see wrecked American cars on carriers on the highway, I think they fix them and sometimes they keep the plates. 

Thursday morning the ground had even more snow on, and even though it was melting and sliding off the roof it stayed white until about noon Friday, because it snowed off and on all day Thursday. Garry went to do his youth classes and picked up the glue to make trusses since Dnepro didn't go into lockdown until midnight. He also brought Misha and Sasha back with him that night, after class he had to head to the center where they were since they had gotten back to Dnepro after being in Kiroy Rog since Sunday doing their documents. 

Garry wore a mask to teach this week since he was starting to feel sick. He acually cancelled his classes for Saturday, he was supposed to go into the school to try doing them on zoom, since our internet cuts out. Hopefully its not Covid, because I am sure to get whatever he has. He's watching movies and went to the barn to check for cows in heat and which one to sell today, so he's not too bad, but has a deep cough when he gets started coughing. 

Here's a photo of the chicken coops Friday, they have nesting boxes and feed and water access flaps. There's a photo of Andrei Rudei welding on the wagon they are rebuilding in the shop this winter. It should be strong enough to haul grain. 

Spring is coming, next week's forecast has temperatures in the teens, 16 celsius, that's about 60 for you American readers. 

Yet another Sharokey

 You may remember reading about going to wrong village with the same name to breed a cow almost two weeks ago. Friday morning Garry got a phone call about breeding a cow from a lady who said she was in Sharokey. He asked which oblast (remembering last time) and she said Dnepropetroesk (the region names did not change from the Soviet ones when the city, village and street names did, Victor told me its because they  were set by law- although the parliment passed the law that made the rest change names).

Julia and the new Losha working

Around one thirty Garry said he had to go breed this cow, and having nothing better to do  I said I would ride along. I'd washed up all the dishes from cooking class, we'd made soup, so there were a lot of dirty bowls and spoons.

Let's eat

So we we drove off on the highway toward Dnepro, turned off to Salonee, drove through that town, followed the detour again to Sharokey. Of course we chatted about going to the wrong one like twelve days ago, but Garry said he'd asked which oblast she lived in. We had even seen a sign for another Sharokey near Kirvoy Rog (also in Dnepropetroesk region) when we went there on Sunday morning. 

When we arrived in Shakokey, Garry tried to phone the lady for further directions. If he isn't going to a familiar place, that's what he does. We had to drive around looking for higher ground as the phone service was poor, and he couldn't get through. We ended up by this interesting old log building when he did finally get the lady on the phone.

Unfortunately, after a hard to follow phone conversation in a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian, he discovered we were in the wrong village. She was in Sharokey-Peele, or Sharokey-Pole. A tiny village closer to Nikolaipolia, off the other side of the highway, turning at the sign for Loubominka. A little discouraged that he hadn't understood when she called, we were off to retrace our trip through Salonee and back to the highway. 

 

that says Sharokeypolia, if you can't read it

 

So we found the right village about twenty minutes later and Garry managed to get her on the phone again (all together yesterday there was about 14 calls between them). Unfortunately we toured the entire village and were back at the village well when he called for the third time, about to give up and go home (Garry has caught something again and is feeling poorly with a bad cough since Thursday). 

However, he decided to give her one more phone call, which sent us down the first street (dirt road) we'd tried under her directions twenty some minutes before. We discovered the turn left was further on (turn left had gotten us on street that had turned into a muddy path that he refused to drive down and get stuck in). He must have talked to her for five minutes at the possible turn left. Na levna illee priyama, he kept asking, while she said many other things. Garry didn't think there was more village straight ahead, but I could see something, maybe a big white dog, up ahead, so after talking to her a while longer we went with straight. I had seen a goat on the side of what looked to be a road to a field, it turned out and there was a street to the left past the trees and the two goats staked out to eat grass, one white and this camoflagued one in the photo. 

The lady was excited that we had finally arrived (not knowing how lucky she was) and as Garry says, they are almost always such nice people. He wore a mask so as not to get the old people sick as he got out of the van to breed her cow. He was commenting on her nice looking chickens, as he walked back out to the van. He told me she had a beuatiful barred hen and she had ducks sitting on eggs in the barn. The poor cows were pretty dirty he said, tied up all winter in the barn, they will be glad to get outside soon.

So we returned home, with another thing to remember when someone calls about a cow to breed in Sharokey. It was the Sharokey-Peele that threw Garry off, he thinks it might be the Ukrainian for field or polee in Russian. The lady talked really fast. He said he had bred a cow in the village before, but ... oh, well, another adventure in cow breeding. 

the right house, finally!

Last weekend

 

We had a busier weekend than usual, instead of Friday night at home, we were in Dnepro for the Party after American English week. The students were excited to see us, there was a lot of games, and we got to present certificates to our classes. All of my students were there, and gave me (Teresa) a lovely gift of a mug that magically makes the class photo appear when you fill it with a hot beverage. There was food too, 'hamburgers' baloney with tomato, lettuce, ketshup, maybe cheese (I can't remember if there was cheese) french fries (tiny potato sticks, I've never seen them in Ukraine, but a real American snack food) and drinks like soda pop. 

It started at five, we needed to arrive early around 4:30. Traffic was heavy down in the center on what was Karl Marx street where the party was, but we were there close to 4:30 for instructions. We were the only teachers there, Jessica was sick with a cold (hopefully we didn't give her ours). So I got to do the interview part of the program with Garry. I let him answer most of the questions, but I did tell them about making a big decision in my life, marrying the first Canadian I found after high school... Garry talked more about why we are in Ukraine.

We got home about 9:30 and went to bed, Garry had a full day of teaching in Dnepro on Saturday, and Friday morning after cooking class, Valentina had wanted to go to Ashan Saturday night because she 'needed everything' for the baby. It had been two weeks since we were there to shop. The schedule had gotten off track (we were going every two weeks on the night Garry teaches only two classes) the week before when he had that extra class for Green Forest and had to change the week he went to the classes afterwards to this past Saturday. We were planning to go this Saturday to get back on track, but Dnepro is going into Covid lockdown today, so English classes will be going online, so maybe not.

Trying to get this post done while Garry is off doing what will be his last his teen English classes for a while. I am also melting honey. There's a metal container and some water in the giant pot on the stove, so I have to keep checking it, it's been simmering for mre than two hours and the honey is almost ready to finish getting it into jars. I have a lot of odd jobs. The 'sunflower honey' tends to be solid and hard to scoop out of the container into jars, so when they get more empty, I get sticky filling jars. 

Saturday morning we woke up to snow for the third Saturday in a row. Less than other weeks and it was gone by noon, melted away. Saturday night we took four students shopping, the mall was crazy busy, maybe Zaporosia is going into lockdown too, they are doing it by regions now, Kyiv did last week, cases and deaths are rising and they have found the British variant in Ukraine. 

Sunday we finally took some students on the promised trip to church in Kirvoy Rog. Only five, Julia and Dima had wanted to go, but she was sick (right after her birthday). The two boys who were staying there to do new passports stayed at Max Fetisov's church, but the other three had to go with us to 'Adam's church' because we were having trouble with the GPS on Garry's phone and weren't sure we could get back to the other church!

Hoping it works better the next time we go, maybe in five or six weeks. They were happy with the Mc Donalds lunch on the way home. They might even get more of the road finished by then, we had a ten minute delay for some road repairs on the new road! 

It is a much nicer trip these days.

Spring is slowly coming

 Look, on Monday Garry found the crocuses blooming in the old yard! When we checked a few weeks ago (March first) we couldn't even find where they were, so it was a surprise. The ones here, yellow ones, were budding, but not quite blooming Monday, it looks like two are blooming today. It was a cold February and first half of March, the winter wheat turned brown during a cold snap last month, which doesn't happen often, most years it stays green all winter.

He was checking on Victor's bees since he wasn't out this week and it was a warm day. Looks like one hive did really well over the winter, one not so well, and two seem to have not made it through the winter. It was so nice out Garry even planted onion sets and sugar snap peas in the garden. He was a little tired after, but he is feeling better everyday. He couldn't wait for St Patricks day with rain in the forecast for Tuesday. It actually waited to rain until nightime, I woke up at one thirty to the sound of rain on the roof last night.

Monday morning Yana brought Garry a bunch of eggs to add to the incubator, in addition to the ones he'd put in Sunday afternoon from our chickens. There were so many leftover eggs, I packaged the extras in groups of three to a bag to give the students to take home after Monday night dinner. We forgot to hand them out until almost half the kids had left though!

I had planned an easy menu for this week after the busy week we'd had, so it was sausages, mashed potatoes with fried cabbage and onions (colcannon for my Irish menu) and two coleslaws, one with apples and mayo and one with red cabbage, corn, onion and cucumber with an oil and vinegar dressing. Plus some gretshka (buckwheat) for people who wanted to fill their plates, since I dished out the potatoes and sausage (one per adult and a half for the two little boys. Angelina doesn't eat, except sometimes cookies, having kasha at home. She enjoyed crawling on the carpet, no worse for her trip to the hospital last week. Little Matfew discovered the joy of the magnetic puzzle on the fridge this time, usually that's Danil's thing to do.

Still can't convince  some of them not to put enough food for two days on their plate. I used up my supply of styofoam takeout containers again last night. Vika always brings a plastic box from home to take her leftovers in, I think we may buy some, put names on them and if you want a doggie bag, bring your box.  We had a sweet Irish bread with raisens, sliced and buttered for dessert. 

It was a quick dinner, since Victor wasn't there to interpret, and Garry had the dishes washed by 6:30 am we had the rest of the evening to ourselves. I/ spent an hour in the middle of the afternoon helping Garry pregcheck cows (basically writing down what he said, Victor has been helpiing him with that when he's out on Mondays and Tuesdays, but he was not here. I had most of the food done when we went over at 2:30 and cooked sausages, cabbage and grethka when I got home (after throwing my clothes in the washer) so I was ready at five.

Tuesday I spent my spare time working on Alona's curtains for the living room/kitchen area, she showed up Tuesday afternoon and got the three for the front of the house on their rods, hopefully Nikolai got them hung okay. He had asked about them while we were chasing cows Monday afternoon because I had told Alona  they'd be ready Monday on Thursday but I didn't get anything done on them over the weekend. I told him three tomoorow and one the day after. I worked on the last one from five until ten last night, so it's ready to hang when they come over for it. 

She did  this afternoon and said there was a problem with hanging the first ones. I had stuck two shorter rods together which apparently made it too long to get into the wood under the drywall, so Nikolai had put up wood over the window. Garry went over to look and showed him how to shorten the rods so he's redoing them.

 

The woodworking students (mostly Dima, Leila, Nikolai and Vasa) have finished building fence for Danil's play yard  that will be put up between the house and shed next door and have moved onto small chicken coops for Dima and Julia and Nikolai and Alona. I am told they will hold six chickens each, so I hope we hatch hens! The students are eager to start the big construction project, the second heifer barn, possibly in two weeks. It needs to dry out so they can clear the space for it with the neighbor's big payloader. We are in the process of buying (or very long term lease anyway) the town dump (directly behind our barn) along with the land under our barns from the local government, and so the new barn may go there, behind the barnyard. If it keeps raining this week as forecast it could be two weeks, but the students are ready to get bonus pay. Of course, Garry is already thinking that they should be planting corn in two weeks, but we'll see. It's not warm yet.

Adventures in cow breeding- part ?

 

Sunday we were looking forward to an easy day. We decided not to go to church in the village, in the hopes that if we didn't give them the cold last week, we definitely wouldn't get them sick this Sunday.

We had told Lena two weeks ago we could visit her class this Sunday, as the students are on school break next week, even though we'd be teaching all week. I had assured her on Monday our colds would be fine by Sunday. We were a lot better (I'm writing this Wednesday and we are finally feeling about normal).

We decided on a St Patrick's day theme- when I asked them what holiday was in March their answers were March 8th (women's day, if you don't know) and Pancake week (Lent is just starting here as Easter will be May 2nd this year). I had a special gift for them, I had to hunt in my closet for it, since I had bought it last year at a dollar store in NJ before flying back, lucky clover coins. Our class last March had been cancelled by the virus. This year we are just wearing masks. 

After the class ended at three, we had to stop and buy a pair of boots for Julia (hers had a hole) and then go breed a cow on the way home. Garry had gotten a phone call before noon about breeding a cow in Shahrokey, which would be on the way home, sort of. Of course, he got another call while we were in class, he phoned them back and now had a second cow to breed in Chorenee Yar (Black Valley), a village on the way to Zaporosia. 

Garry normally takes the field road from Nikoliapolia to Sharokey, but it's too muddy now to drive on (more about that later) so we'd turn off the highway at Salonee and go to breed the cow. We were following the road out of Salonee and turned onto the road Garry thought was the right one, but after we passed a small village he checked the GPS on his phone, and was unsure he was on the right road. We had to go up a hill for better phone reception, and as we topped the hill, he saw Sharokey in the distance. Hurray, we didn't need to turn around. When we got to the village, he phoned to get the address, checking we're by the school, store, playground, it's Centralna Street, why can't we find number 49 with this lady on the phone standing by the street? Turn around drive the main street again, as we are out of town... find a guy walking down the street, put him on the phone, he recruits a second guy in a car... eventually they decide we are in the wrong Sharokey. That's right, this one where Garry has bred a number of cows is in Dnepropetrosk region, and there is one in Zaporosia region. 

Garry turned down a different street to take the field road back to Nikolipolia, since he could see the dirt was drying on the top of the plowed fields, and it woud be faster than going back through Salone to the highway and then to Chornee Yar before finding this place in the other Sharokey (which is off the highway just before the city of Zaporosia.)

As we approached the field road the turnoff looked very muddy, but Garry pointed out the next section looked drier. The van churned up the dirt road but a couple hundred feet in, it was looking wetter ahead, and Garry decided to try to reverse out and back to the street. It was a little tense as he backed down, speeding through the last mud hole and making it through, slipping and sliding, tires churning up mud.

Better safe than sorry, we went back through the town of Salonee and back to the highway. As we passed Nikolipolia on the highway Garry decided to go to the other Sharokey first, since it would be dusk soon, and it would be easier to find a new place when it was still light enough to see the house numbers. 

So he checked he GPS to make sure we knew where we were going and we were off. Garry was hurrying, and going about 130 k/h so I was amazed when a couple cars blew by us and disappeared into the distance, they had to be going like 180. We turned off the highway just before the police check, just before the circle into Zaporosia (for those of you who have been here, for everyone else, a long ways) and followed a bumpy road to the village- it's about five kilometers off the highway. As we were driving, Garry told me one day someone had come to house requesting we buy the Mennonite House Museum in this village, as the owners had died and it was in disrepair. We did not see it, we think. We'll have to go back someday, maybe, as they have another cow to breed they said.

We found  house number 49 with no problems in the correct village, Garry was still muttering about having to go so far, and he wouldn't have said yes, if he knew which Sharokey it was. 

The lady waved him right into the yard with the van. He said they often do so they don't have to tie up the dogs for him to walk past. Lots of houses have dogs on chains to discourage unwanted visitors coming into their yard, they are right by the driveway. This place had six dogs, most tied to doghouses, one free. 

A second older lady came out and went to the barn, and I saw a man as Garry opened the door. He said I should have come in, there were three old ladies taking care of four spotlessly clean cows. They used to have eight they told him. It took a little longer than I expected for him to return to the car because the big Holstein kept dancing around at the end of her rope, since she has twice as much space as she used to. Garry says often cows that the vet has given a shot of prostigladis to bring them in heat do not stand as well (as still) as cows that come in heat naturally, and this was one. They said that they had another cow who should be in heat next week and didn't mind paying extra for the extra gas for him to come. He charged 400 grivna instead of 250 as normal, like they pay at the place with the very long drive we went to in the fall. He was glad we had come as he liked the old ladies and their well cared for cows. This time of year he sees a lot of very skinny cows.

You'll notice I said the cow had a needle to bring her in heat, at a certain point in their cycle, cows given the hormone will usually be ready to breed in about three days. If people have a cow who has been open (not pregnant) for a while, they will get the vet to check if they are cycling, sometimes there is a problem, and sometimes they just didn't notice when the cow was in heat. Apparently there is a vet giving out Garry's phone number because he gets a lot of calls from new people that want to know if he can breed their cow in three days. This lady had called in the middle of the week (when he was sick) and Garry had said sure he could come, not noticing that she'd said she was in Zaporosia region (apparently both times she called- sometimes language is a problem especially when people talk fast).

So we returned to the highway, made a u-turn before having to go around the circle, and headed toward home, watching for the sign for Chorney Yar. Garry has breed cows there often over the years. He said he had bred a cow where he thought this one was last week, but he had only seen the one cow so he was puzzled. Sometimes he gets people who call for a neighbor. Dusk was falling fast as we got to where he thought was needed to go. He got out of the car to try and phone her to ask, since no one came out of the house. Which call was it? he'd gotten several from this lady and some from the one we'd just been to. Must not be the most recent number, I thought. Wrong, that was the other lady when he called. Try again, back out of the car, maybe there would be  better phone reception.

He got more directions, a different place. We drove further down the same road, looking for someone standing by their gate. Success. It's completely dark as we park in the street in front of the house. Garry tries to get the straw of semen out of the tank, thawed and into the tiny end of the metal rod, and then put a plastic sheath on it. I can hear him saying he can't see well, so I get out with my cell phone light. He's standing at the back of the van, wearing just his t shirt, cutting the end off the straw before covering it with the sheath, then putting it down the back of his shirt to stay safe and pulling on a long plastic glove on his arm. The waiting lady  raises her eyebrows and smiles at me when he sticks it down the back of his shirt, then leads the way to her barn and cow. I played on my phone in the van, as it was too dark to crochet (the highway is smooth enough the last couple years, so I often have some with me).

He came out smiling, they asked him to preg check their other cow, apparently Garry had bred her five months ago, they said that she'd been bred by the bull and then Max when we were in Canada but only Garry could get her pregnant! They gave him a two dollar bonus for saying he could feel a calf there. 

So we finally got home at 6:30 after a couple hours of driving around, in time for Garry's family zoom call at seven pm this week, since time changed in the US and Canada but doesn't spring forward here until March 28th. We had to wait until Monday morning to watch the video of our son Matt's sermon.