finished

Garry tells me that they did get all the hay baled before it rained on Saturday afternoon. There were twelve gardens to bale up. 

The photos were taken Friday around six pm. Even though it looks cloudy here, it didn't rain until Saturday afternoon. Garry even had time to hang his sheets he washed Saturday morning out to dry on the line. 

They had quite a pile of wheat silage, Max did four loads Thursday and chopped most of the day Friday. Garry went to Dnepro Saturday morning and bought plastic to cover it, so it was done before it rained. 

They disced up the five hectares of wheat ground once Friday, and worked it again and planted the sunflowers. Garry also planted some sweet corn in the bare rows they had left for when they start chopping the corn in the field. They leave it unplanted because otherwise they have to just run it over. The sweet corn will be harvested before it's time to chop the corn silage.

By the way, no drip line was put in yet, they hope to start Monday. I'm told  the corn is six to eight inches tall already. 

 Garry checked the rain gauge after the thunderstorm went through mid-afternoon, they had half an inch of rain. That should be enough to get the newly planted sunflowers out of the ground, and keep everything growing. Garry says the second cut alfalfa is about a foot tall already. The unusually wet spring has meant we have not bought any irrigation water yet for the alfalfa or of course, the cornfields. However, they are pretty sure they will need to this summer so it's time to get the driplines in before the corn gets taller.

They have been buying and bagging up kavas grain ( similar to the beer brewer's grain) . Here's a photo of them at work. This will be fed in the cows feed mix as a protein supplement, we have been buying it for a couple years now. It will keep for months in the bags.

I found out why I didn't hear from Garry Friday morning, he was called to the barn at 5:30 that morning. The cow got up, maybe even before he got there, but he noticed the manure outside needed to be moved, so he went to work because he knew they needed all four tractors working in the fields later that morning.

Unfortunately, one of the Belarus tractors baling hay had a wheel break off (I think, something put it out of action) and they had to fix it. Max has been telling Garry we should sell the oldest Belarus and buy a new one so we have fewer breakdowns. 

As for me, only one more day at the hexaplex and I can move to the farmhouse. Not that I can do much, as Manitoba is shutdown for visiting because of covid. However, I can go buy Garry some socks and on Thursday I have an appointment to get my first covid immunization. 

Irises

 

While I am busy crocheting and watching television on day eleven of isolation in Canada; Garry is keeping very busy in Ukraine. Thursday he went to Zaporosia in the morning and bought more glue and they finished building those last five trusses. 


Max has been spraying sunflowers for weeds, although they were trying to work out some problems with the computer system that regulates the amount it's spraying on Wednesday evening. He had finished those fields that were planted first and was trying to fix it before spraying the rest.

There were guys baling  hay on Thursday also, Garry didn't know if they would be able to finish it in one day. Someone had some to bale and offered them half if they cut and baled it. Max said there was quite a good crop. They had also mowed all of Yana and Vova's alfalfa in gardens. I think they have nine now, so that will be baled up too.

Garry wasn't sure if they were putting in drip line when I talked to him Thursday evening, but  he thought they might be. He said he hadn't seen Sasha Borchuk and even the lady at the store had commented that he hadn't been in to buy anything. He had worked on drip line last year. A couple guys walk behind the tractor unrolling it as it goes in the ground.

He had mowed the five hectares of wheat for silage that afternoon. He had Danil in the tractor with him for a couple hours. He's almost three now and really loves getting into Garry's car, and his favorite YouTube show is a Russian one called tractor. Garry said that Danil talked the whole time. 

Max was chopping the silage already, they plan to disc it up and plant sunflowers tomorrow to get their double crop off to a good start with rain in the forecast for Friday night.

 

If you wondering about all the iris photos, last summer Garry started collecting them. How? He'd admire them while breeding someone's cow and they'd dig a piece up for him to take home and plant. 

I didn't ask if he bought this new lupin he planted or whether it was given to him.

Normally he calls me when he gets up in the morning, sometime between 9:30 and 10:30 pm my time the night before,  but no call tonight. We did talk around ten this morning while he was eating supper, before he went out to help Alona chase her chicks in and look to see if they had been laying drip line. 

Building trusses

  Garry got all the supplies ready and all the wood they had cut for the trusses and found the nail gun from where he had put it away last year. He and the students got half the trusses built on Tuesday. He said that it took a while to get everything lined up, these trusses are asymmetrical, so off by an inch with the first piece means it's really off by the last one, as you can see there's a lot of pieces, but eventually they got it going well.

This morning they had to wait to start, Garry had to drive to Dnepro to buy more liquid nitrogen and bull semen, because he was out again. Tuesday morning he shook out the tank for a second time because he'd used the last one the evening before, finding three more straws (doses of semen) and he used two of them before Wednesday morning. People are calling him to breed cows in villages all over these days since the cows have been out on pasture for a month or so now. Sometimes repeat customers, but many new ones, like on Tuesday evening. 

 They also were waiting for a lumber delivery because they ran out of two by fours. The problem with having lumber sitting around is someone decides to use some. Garry says lumber has gotten more expensive now. By five pm today (Wednesday) there were only five more trusses to make. They're making 24, this heifer barn will be a few feet longer than the first one. 


Garry needs to go to the city in the morning while the students are in class with Larissa, it's the last Christian ethics for the year. They ran out of the tubes of glue for the truss building. It takes a lot when they are putting them together, it goes on all the plywood squares you see in the photos, and they are on both sides of the trusses. 

With Victor back from Canada, Garry had the Tuesday  staff meeting at eleven am outside in the yard. He said it was a nice break from working on the trusses. He says he's trying to not work past five pm since he still needs to take it a little easy after having covid. However, often that just means he's driving around, breeding cows and picking up supplies from the city for building, like he did Tuesday night and then falling into bed exhausted at 8:30. He told me that he was taking it easy tonight, since he could wait to go buy glue. Of course, someone could still phone or come to the door to say their cow is in heat, could he come breed her?

Working

 I'm busy isolating in Manitoba, keeping busy crocheting and video chatting with the family. Meanwhile Garry has been busy getting ready for his cement pour, pouring the concrete on Saturday, and helping Victor (who just returned from visiting his family in BC) with some runaway bees, among other things. It was Alona's birthday on Saturday, so he bought her a cake and gave her the present of baking/pizza making stuff I'd prepared before I left. Plus he has to feed and water his chicks every couple hours in their box. 

Here's few photos from Saturday.

The cement trucks came in the morning, so Garry was busy with making sure the forms would be ready, since he thought it was coming mid afternoon. As soon as they were done with the cement pour, Victor discovered that some of the bees from the big hive were swarming. They landed in a tree in the neighbor's yard, so they were able to recover them and put them in an empty one, so now we have three. It looks like the queen did make it in the box when they shook them in off the branch. It seemed that Victor, Garry and Max didn't even get stung, but it was lucky it happened during Victor's first trip out to the village since he returned to Ukraine on Thursday. 

He was pretty tired by the time he got in the house around 2:30, and had a phone call to go breed a cow in a nearby village, so he told them he'd come around four. He's pretty much back to normal, but still needs to nap on busy days.

Garry had to find some help to get the forms off Sunday, and it took a while but they got them off. Monday morning he plans to get some of the students building the trusses, and this week they need to start getting the dripline in the cornfields and the sunflowers are going to be sprayed for weeds. They have four leaves now and they just need a couple more to be ready for spraying. 

The chicks will be ready to move over to Julia and Dima's coop sometime this week so I won't hear cheeping everytime I talk to Garry. Apparently the sound coming from the spare bedroom is driving Box (the cat) crazy.

Good morning

 Took me a while to get Garry online yesterday after our new grandson arrived in the morning. Noah and Audrey have named him Dustin Ronald (Ronald after my father). He weighed in at nine pounds one oz. and has adorable chubby cheeks. I saw him in a video chat shortly after he was born, just like I did his brother. I'll get to really see him in ten days when I finish isolating. 

Garry had a busier day than expected as his worksite dried up enough that he worked on prepping for the next concrete pour after lunch. Then he took a drive to town to buy some supplies and ended up going to both home superstores in Zaporosia before finding what he was looking for. The restaurant he planned eating at was closed too, so he ending up with sharma from a street vendor near the Nova Lenya store. His trip took a couple hours, which is why I couldn't get him on to talk. 

Just as they finished working on the building site, it started to pour, he tells me, so he hoped to work on the forms for the wall today (Thursday) but I haven't talked to him to find out how that went. He did say that there was almost another inch of rain Wednesday, so he wasn't sure they'd be able to work. He was going to work on Alona'a chicken pen, as the big chicks keep hiding under the house and it's hard to get them out from under and shut up inside safe for the night. 

He plans to keep the baby chicks in the house for a week or so before taking them to Dima and Julia's where the second chicken house will be. I think he said there were 21 this time. 

I'm enjoying another quiet day, too wet to sit on the deck today, but there's a cool damp breeze coming in the screen door. It was very dry, so the guys are hoping it keeps raining for days here in Manitoba. 

Here and there again

 Monday morning Garry dropped me at the airport with a kiss for luck and headed back to the village, by a route that would miss the bridge that is being rebuilt, in the rain. He got home by noon, it was dry there. He found out that they were just starting to bale the hay Sunday when they had a rain shower and then it was too wet to bale. However, Max was chopping the heavier stuuf (the part planted two years ago) when Garry got back and they were hoping to bale the lighter stuff (planted four years ago) if it was dry enough later that afternoon, since the forecast was wet a cloudy for the rest of the week.

 It all worked out and there is a pile of hay bales under the straw shed (which was straighten up and braced recently). They loaded and unloaded eight wagons plus the wagons of  haylage monday. They did three more wagons as haylage on Tuesday morning because it wasn't going to dry before the rain came, as they had hoped when it got too wet to finish Monday evening. They got eight tenths of an inch of rain Tuesday afternoon as thunderstorms rolled through, so no concrete pouring today for the heifer barn (curbs and walls were being framed up yesterday, for the next step in building.

Garry was hopping with his eggs hatching on Tuesday and Wednesday, so he had new chicks to take care of. He said Alona brought him some pancakes to eat Monday night, so he didn't have to make anything or look in the freezer for the stuff I made him. 

My flights went okay, although I probably should have asked to ride the mobility cart instead of walking through the airports, especially in Frankfurt, where I got pretty whipped walking to my gate, out of breath and red faced. However, it all worked out and I did get to skip the hotel quarentine in Toronto because of my recent resolved case of covid (I had a copy in English from my positive test on April first to show them) and after walking between the Air Canada and Luftansa counters a few times in departures, I had a ticket for the flight that landed in Winnipeg at ten pm. It was a relief to land as the sun was setting and head to the farm hexplex apartment to isolate for 14 days ( I still have to do that). Lots of time to finish recovering, and I've booked my Covid shot when I get out of isolation and get to see the grandbaby arriving today.

Finished and starting

 The crops are planted, the hay was mowed down Friday and is ready to start baling. Garry is going to miss out on baling as he will be driving me to Kyiv today to get on my plane to Germany and then to Canada tomorrow morning. 

Yesterday he drove me into Dnepro to get a next day covid test. They don't guarantee it will be done until 5 pm today, so it better arrive in the email while we are driving! I need it for Germany, although I should be able to skip the three day hotel stay and testing in Canada due to showing the paperwork for my recently resolved Covid infection. He got home in time for the second truck of concrete for the heifer barn. Garry's pretty much back to normal after a month out of hospital. I wish I was, but definitely getting better. 

The tulips won't be blooming when I return at the end of June, nor will the canola. The fields were bright yellow as we drive back on the highway yesterday.

Friday morning we made biscuits for my last cooking class or at least until July, when we will make jam, anyway. They decided they were easy to make, and enjoyed eating them hot from the oven with butter and jam. 

Garry had an adventure when he dumped the liquid nitrogen out of his tank to recover the straws of semen that had fallen out into the bottom. The stuff we bought last week had tipped out of the bag, and he had three cows to breed in our barn and people phoning to get cows bred. Vlad was his helper, you have to be very careful as it can freeze you, too! 

Luckily they were successful and he could get the cows bred. About forty straws (not all the new bull either), were saved. They dumped out the nitrogen in a bucket, then shook the straws into a pan and Garry picked them up with tweezers and put them back in a bag, as quickly as possible. 

Rain, planting, frost and other stuff

We had half an inch of rain on Saturday, and most of it fell after four in the afternoon. We went out for lunch for Mother's Day (Sunday was a holiday here also, remembering WWII). We sat on the patio, since they have an awning at O'Hara's Pub in Zaporosia and had steak dinners- with an appetizer of French fries. We discovered they had inexpensive good food when we stopped there last year when Angelina was born (it's near that hospital, just off main street). It hardly rained while we were there.

Garry kept saying that we weren't getting rain like the forecast said, but it was supposed to be heavier in the afternoon. Turned out it was late afternoon and evening, it made the transplants he had put in the garden happy. At least until Monday morning. We had some frost Sunday night, and although the peppers and flowers didn't all die, a lot of the tomato plants did. Garry went out Monday and bought some tomato plants to replace them. Hopefully they will be as nice tomatoes as the beefsteak and roma ones we had.

The sunflowers that were planted first were just coming up Sunday, Garry took some photos, they seem to be unaffected by the frost. The corn planting was finished by noon Thursday and they then started planting the rest of the sunflowers, and are finishing up today (Wednesday). The hope is one of the sunflower groups will get the rain at the right time to get maximum production this summer. 

The corn of course will not have a problem with water, since it is irrigated. The new big plastic pipe was installed this past week in the big field, with Andrey Rudei and Vlad helping the guy who was putting the pipes together. This pipe will replace the big flat (when there's no water in it) hose that ran the length of the field connecting the ones that ran across the field. It sometimes came apart last summer, causing problems, so they decided to spend a little more and get something better. The pipe will be underground. That piece of lay flat hose will be turned into an extra run across the field, so there will be five instead of four that connect to all the little hoses underground. That means that hopefully all the field will get enough water on to grow good tall corn. 

For your crop report, wheat looks good, its getting taller, no flag leaves yet, it's been sprayed and looks like there will be lots of straw this year. Never enough straw, since we use it for bedding and feeding. Of course there will be grain also. The hay is a foot tall and will be ready to cut in a week, if it ever gets dry enough to make hay. They may have to make silage out of it and maybe some wheat too (so the can try double cropping sunflowers, two harvests in one year off the same field). There's only about a week's worth of hay in the mow to feed now, so hopefully it gets dry for a week or so.

There's a number of winter canola fields along the highway and they are starting to bloom. We don't grow any, but a number of farmers use them to rotate with wheat and sunflowers. 

Well hopefully they finished planting sunflowers, we are getting some rain this afternoon. It has been a very unusual spring, cooler and wetter than any in the the twelve years we've been here.

On Mothers Day I had a number of video calls from the kids and grandkids, we went to church in the village where they had an Easter service, since they were closed for the quarantine last week. It was too wet (muddy) for the couple that comes from a village across the fields to drive in this week. Christos vas Christ!

This week- planting

This week it was dry enough to start planting corn. Of course the corn goes in same fields where there was corn last year, since those are the fields with irrigation. Because of the water that went on them last year, there was more moisture in those fields, which is why they started with planting sunflowers last week. However, they may have finished planting corn today or nearly finished. They should finish Friday and then plant the other half of the sunflower fields (the sunflower fields are the ones where winter wheat was harvested last year, the two crops rotate, although there is talk of adding another crop to the rotation.) All four tractors have been busy in the fields, Max was spraying the wheat with fungicide (I believe I heard) Wednesday. Apparently the guys planting corn had one of the big wagons in the field with totes of fertilizer, and they had used the ones up on one side, so when they went to move it at the end of the day Wednesday, it tipped and damaged the drawbar, because the load was unbalanced. They fill the planter's fertilizer hoppers with five gallon buckets from the totes in the wagon.

Today they were installing the new pipe for the irrigation for the big corn field, this means easier and more even water distribution across the field, adding the pump last year helped but there were still parts of the field that did not grow as well because it did not get enough water.

Of course I am writing this around midnight Thursday, and there seems to have been a couple of rain showers in the last couple hours, so that may affect what gets planted tomorrow, depending on how much rain we got. They were able to plant Monday and Tuesday as we did not get much rain the day of the picnic. They were out in the fields cultivating that day, and planting sunflowers. 

Why am I up at midnight? I am still having problems sleeping all night, I wake up every couple hours and go to the bathroom and get a drink of water as my throat gets dry at night. The one direction from the doctor in the hospital we are trying to follow, is drink lots of water. I normally have problems falling asleep anyway. Hopefully I get to sleep soon, as Garry is supposed to be picking up more bull semen in Dnepro tomorrow morning as he's almost out again. I'm planning to ride along for a Mc Donalds breakfast, and maybe some groceries.

More of our crop report- the alfalfa is about 12 inches tall (in the mature fields, the newly planted stuff is getting real leaves). It won't be long and they will be baling instead of planting. Garry has the garden all planted, except for cucumbers, he is looking for his seed. I even helped with some hoeing in the flower beds, and planted our two dozen marigolds Wednesday that we started in the house back in February. A couple were blooming already. 

Easter

 

Easter Sunday, May 2nd, we decided to go to church in the village, but when we drove there, the gate was locked (we found out today it was because of the Zaporosia quarantine lockdown, there will be church this Sunday, the pastor wanted Garry to get the lawn mowed at the church this morning). Garry really wanted to attend church for Easter, so we drove to Dnepro and went to Morningstar. Of course we were a bit late, since we left the village late, they were singing the last praise song when we came in. We were waved to chairs at the back, even though a lot of people were standing. People were happy to see us. 

The Sunday school had a recitation and song for Easter before the sermon. It was a long service and we were invited to the picnic that afternoon, but had to go home and rest. We are still not back to normal, although we are better than we were. 

Monday we were watching the sky as we prepared for the picnic with the students for Easter. It really looked like rain, but how would we cook meat over the fire if we weren't outside? At 3:30 there was a downpour for ten minutes, but by four o'clock, students were showing up and playing games and Garry had the fire going.

 

Vlad prayed for the meal. Just as the food was served, we had some raindrops but we stayed outside and everyone was full by the time I handed out some little Easter chocolates and put out the paska bread I made on Saturday. 

Here's a few more photos. If you are wondering where the benches came from, Dima decided we needed them and built six last week. Garry is beginning to wonder if he'll need more lumber when they start building the heifer shed. 

Alona and Sasha helped clean up afterwards. The chicken legs had a rough time, some fell in the fire, but they ate them anyway. We also had pork shaslik.

This week

We are still recovering from Covid, I have been slower than Garry, still coughing, and having vertigo (dizzy) when I turn my head. Garry has napped some afternoons, too, but he's getting things done. This week he started breeding cows again, and he's mowing the lawn himself instead of watching a student do it. Today he finished planting the tomatoes and peppers in the garden, as the colder nights are supposed to be over. It was 25 c today, we even ran the air conditioning in the car when we went to the city.

Garry has been working on getting the ground for the heifer shed leveled so they can start the concrete work next week. He also bought paint after I said last Sunday the chimneys on the barn were faded with the yellow and blue Ukrainian flags that were painted seven years ago (and repainted once since). A couple of the guys were willing to work on the roof, and couple of other students repainted inside the inside of the milkhouse white. A couple of the girls are repainting the fences on the yards.

before

after

The bees are quite happy with the fruit trees and tulips blooming this week. We had a couple rainy days, half an inch one day and 3/8s the next time, so it was too wet to do a lot of field work, but cultivating and even some sunflower planting has happened in the last couple days. The corn fields were too wet to do, the water that went on the fields last summer means there is more moisture in those fields.

 

I did do cooking class on Friday with the students, we made paska bread (with baking powder instead of yeast so it would be faster). They got to take one mini one home. Today (Saturday) I made the all day yeast versions for the picnic on Monday.

Yes, that does mean that tomorrow is Easter Sunday in Ukraine.