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!