More hay

 They baled 3500 bales of alfalfa, and 1500 bales of oatstraw with more of that to do Saturday. Might rain Saturday night.

Haying

 Today they got a thousand bales of alfalfa baled. Tomorrow they will start on the oat bales. 

Garry also got a photo of him in the corn field so you can see how it's grown.

 

He also sent me a photo of some WWII shrapnel they found in the field.

Back to work

After a busy week in Kramatorsk,  Garry drove back to Dnepro leaving his apartment at four am Saturday. Pastor Yuri rode along with Garry because he was teaching at the Bible School in Dnepro that morning. Garry got busy as soon as he returned to the village. He got a call to breed a cow for someone before he even got home.

He picked the peas in the garden and got a bowlful to freeze. While he was gone they had gotten the driplines in the corn fields and started connecting them to the layflat hoses. Garry is anxious to get them ready, not that the plants need water, but the corn needs fertilizer, which they apply during the summer by adding it to the irrigation water. Of course, it rained while he was gone, two and a half inches. They finished connecting the driplines in the large field Tuesday and just have the small field left to roll out the layflat and connect all the driplines now.

Garry decided to mow the hay, starting with the oats in the new alfalfa seeding. (Oats are a nurse crop for the baby alfalfa plants). They are about four feet tall (or about a meter for you metric thinkers) and thick. In fact, it's still too wet to bale yet on Wednesday, but they will start baling the older alfalfa field. It was 24 degrees at seven am with a predicted high of 33, so it will get drier. Sunday when they started mowing the forecast was calling for rain midweek but now it's moved the rain to Sunday.

He even made cherry jam Sunday afternoon with Alona and Vika stirring the pots. They also helped make salads for Monday's student dinner. They managed to not get rained on this week. 

Almost a Vacation

 Garry had been looking forward to his trip to Kramatorsk to teach English at Pastor Yuri's camp (VBS). He thought he'd have a restfull week, teaching three 40 minutes English classes for five days, living in an apartment. However, it hasn't gone as he planned.

First, his plan was to make the four hour drive from Dnepro after attending church there on Sunday. Saturday night he discovered that it was this Sunday that he'd promised to help Tanya with her student oral testing, not next Sunday like he thought, and it was from four to six pm. He ended up leaving Dnepro about 7:30, with the van piled full of humanitarian aid from Morningstar church for their sister church. He said he grabbed his suitcase and put it in the front seat so he could find it when he got there.

Which he did about 11:30 Sunday night. His phone GPS worked well for directions until he got to the city. If you don't know where Kramatorsk is, we haven't driven there is years, since the war in the east because it is much closer to the front than we are, in fact, early in the war it was taken over by the non-Ukranian side, but returned to government control before the 'ceasefire'. Anyway, Garry used his tried and true method of finding a place he can't find, he hired a taxi to follow to where he was going.

So he didn't get a lot of sleep before his first day of teaching. Garry is a go to bed at nine guy most days, but he figured he's catch up on his sleep on Monday night. Turns out VBS started in the morning but he was there until lunch at three o'clock. His classes went okay, although he was finding it difficult teaching the youngest group since most of them know very little other than my name is________. They are learning animals with pictures, but the oldest group was easier he said. 

So he got back to the apartment and took a nap in the air conditioning, someone from the church brought him dinner (rice and chicken) and around seven pm, he went to the nearby grocery store to buy something for breakfast. He took the van there, I called him around that time, so I was thinking he'd call back soon when he returned to the apartment.

I got a call from him late afternoon Manitoba time, and was like it must be two in the morning, why are you calling now? He was just getting to bed. When he returned to the apartment area to park, some man started yelling at him about where he'd parked. Parking spots are a problem, since most Ukrainian apartment building were not really planned to have parking for cars, and more and more people have their own car.

Anyway, Garry decided to head up to his rented seventh floor apartment, but the guy got on the elevator with him. Garry figured to avoid confrontation and the guy knowing where he was living by getting off and walking up. As he reached his floor there was the guy with a very large friend coming down from the floor above. They wouldn't let him get to his door, and the big guy punched Garry in the head. 

Garry phoned Yuri, the other guys called the cops and said Garry was drunk and driving to endanger children, and had parked in their parking spot. Garry said he had parked where he had been told to park when he arrived the night before. Garry ended up taking a breathalizer, theycops said there weren't any reserved parking places. Then everyone insisted he go to hospital to get checked out, then they moved him to a different apartment, so that's why he was going to bed at two am.

He got about three hours of sleep before getting up to teach Tuesday, he said the morning sun was bright in the apartment, so he left as soon as he taught his classes and didn't stay for lunch. He picked up a pizza on his way back to the apartment (he says this apartment building is just behind the grocery store, so he can just walk there) where he parked in a muddy spot that no one would want. Then he went to bed until late afternoon, when he went for a short walk. He was going to get some groceries, but a big bang of thunder had him hurrying back after buying a cup of coffee from a kiosk. He said he poured right after he got back to the building.

He'd talked to Max and they had gotten all the dripline in the corn fields and were starting to attach it to the layflat hoses. That takes a while to do, but the irrigation system will be in place soon. Not that they need it yet, I think he said something about Max almost getting stuck in the mud in one field.

Here in Manitoba, the boys were making haylage for the last three days, so I have been doing a lot of baby and Carson watching with daddy mowing hay, and made two field meals besides. There are 12 or 14 guys working on the crew, driving trucks, tractors and choppers, so it's a production to make it and bring it to the fields now. Our daughter-in-laws take turns and I make some when I'm here, too.

More rain?

 

It's like Manitoba and Ukraine have switched weather this month. I have been in the extreme heat, with some huge thunderstorms (and even power outtages) while back in Ukraine, Garry has had cool wet weather. while it's been a little cooler here, his weather hasn't changed much. He had a student dinner outside Monday eveing which ended shortly after the rain started. He said they were still eating when it started but the hotdogs did get cooked over the fire this week.

Early in the week (Tuesday) they got ready to pour the next batch of concrete. Around two o'clock they finally finished getting the ground in front of the 'old' heifer barn level and ready to pour cement.  Garry likes to get a full truck since transportation costs remain the same. The area in front of the feeder gets hard to drive on when it's wet weather so they are upgrading to cement to drive on, and upgrading the maure storage so it holds more than a couple days worth. More cows means more milk made and more manure pushed out every day when they clean the barn, so a taller wall and larger pad is happening too. The truck had been ordered for four o'clock, but they had to cancel it when the skies opened once again and it poured, just as they finished leveling the ground. 

The next day they didn't get much done. Garry went to the city and got his renewal done for his resident card. Mine expires on July 7th, which is why I have a return ticket for June 25th. Victor has to go twice, because you are supposed to do it three weeks ahead. We used to do this in the fall, but every year it

They did have two dry days, and even got back to putting drip line in a couple times, however it is not finished. Thursday they did get the concrete poured, and put drip line in the smaller corn field until the rain came down around four o'clock. The big field isn't finished but they thought it might be wetter. All the fields are a lot wetter now. They got an inch of rain Thursday and another inch today, when the rain started around ten am as they finished taking the forms off.

Garry tells me many sunflower fields have powdery mildew with all the wet weather. So far our fields look good, after we had some problems with it a few years ago, the guys have purchased seed varieties that are resistant to the disease. Garry tells me that someone got the guys to cultivate up their pumpkin field for them, about 75% of the plants were dying, they planned to replant it, however there's been two inches of rain since. 

Hopefully the wheat doesn't have problems with mildew, right now the plants are just starting to look a little yellow in the setting sun I'm told. Also hoping all these rain storms doesn't flatten too much of the fields. The wet grain heads get heavy for the stems and the wind knocks them down. Garry thinks the crop will be ripe two weeks later than last year, with all the cool wet weather they've had. 

Garry tells me the cherries are just starting to ripen and he found two pods on the Chinese peas in the garden. He's worried a bunch will ripen and get old while he's away next week. He is going to Kramatorsk to teach English at the church's kids camp. At least he is feeling better today, he had a bout with food poisoning Thursday afternoon and went to bed right after the cement was done. So the exact timing of Thursday's rain is in question, but he heard it on the roof and there was an inch in the rain gauge this morning.

Rain

 Garry has always said that you can't get too much rain in Ukraine, especially in the summer. However, he is definitely getting a lot of rain this week. He woke up Tuesday morning to the sound of rain on the roof. The rain started overnight. The rain gauge read four and half inches  by Wednesday morning. Eight inches fell over about sixty hours.

Thursday it was lighter (mostly drizzle, he said)  but still raining. He said they built some walls for the heifer barn inside of the Quonset  barn. Monday they got the forms set up for the next cement pour, but it will be a while before it's dry enough. One forecast has rain every day for the next week, the other one is only calling for rain for three or four days. Garry always checks both Dnepro and Zaporosia because we are between the two cities.

Unfortunately a lot of wheat fields have gone down- lying down from the combination of water making the heads heavy and wind. Garry said their fields didn't have much down Wednesday but who knows what will happen if it rains for a week. The wheat was up to Garry's waist last weekend, so he was looking forward to a good hsrvest and lots of straw to bale.

Of course all this rain is saving on buying irrigation water for the corn and hay fields. However, it's been cool, only 10, 11, 12 degrees Celsius there while Manitoba has been around and over thirty degrees.

I drove to Morden Wednesday and got my first covid shot. First twenty hours, just a sore arm,but this evening I have the chills and my legs and both arms ache. Maybe it's true that  people who have had covid react more, because our daughter-in-law and two sons who also got their needles yesterday just have slightly sore arms. I did spend a lot of today on my feet, as I have been weeding my flower beds. However I am looking forward to immunity when I return to Ukraine from Canada, and this is nothing like having covid.

Chicks

 The baby chicks started jumping out of the box Garry had them in the bedroom on Friday. He decided it was time to move them to the second chicken coop they built. This batch was going to Jilia and Dima at the "new house". They didn't get everything ready on Saturday, but they moved on Sunday. 

Garry went to church in the village that day, took an afternoon nap and was in on the zoom call for his father's 90th birthday that evening. Monday morning we were chatting over the internet while he was eating breakfast and talking about how there must be some noisy baby birds outside that stopped yelling if he opened the door to the bedroom the chicks had been in. 

Then we decided that it really sounded like a baby chick. Garry went in and pulled stuff out from under the bunk beds to check. He had to lie on the bed and reach down behind it to pull this chick out from down under the heat pipe that runs along the wall. He gave him a drink of water and took him to join his friends when he went over to the barn that morning.


We hatched a number of chicks that look like this. There are lots of these naked neck chickens in the village these days, it must be a dominant trait. They never get feathers on the back of their necks, so they are a little strange looking.