Chopping corn and other crop stuff

 So for the last couple years, Garry and Max have talked about hiring a custom chopper instead of doing it themselves with the old chopper that needs parts from Canada -every year it seems. However, the only farmer that hires it done nearby doesn't use irrigation, so his corn is ready to turn into silage long before ours. Not this year, since everyone has good corn because of all the rain this summer, so this would be the year.

Last week, while  Max was at the sea with his family, he found out the custom guy would be at Vitaly's farm in two days, and they started there Monday. Max came back Tuesday, Wednesday morning there was a bit of excitement when the chopper didn't want to come here because it was so slow there. We'd have the same trucks hired from that farm and wagons with tractors to chop into, so they could make more money elsewhere. 

No one has gotten our chopper ready to work yet, it chopped some hay this year, but it needs to be set up for corn to use it. Max went off to offer them more money, and they agreed to come here for a day and a half. They arrived after lunch for the half day, unfortunately, shortly after getting the headlands chopped, their ten year old machine broke down (something to do with the automatic greasers) and yesterday evening when we got back from picking Julia and Dima's washing machine (we left for Zaporosia after the breakdown) they'd sent all the drivers home while they waited for a service man to come from Dnepro.

So we'll see what gets done today, this year they plan on filling the entire bunker, since they didn't make enough last year and really had to cut back on feeding silage. It looks like the old chopper may have to go to work but we'll see what happens today with the custom guy. The driver was very impressed by our cornfield. He said he thought he'd seen good corn this year, but nothing like this.

Tuesday around noon I went with  Garry to breed a cow in the village across the highway, which means we drove past our sunflower field over there. Even though it was only planted the day before the field on this side of the highway, it's so dry it looks ready to combine. Garry thinks it may be a different variety, maybe seed leftover from last year.

 There was a lot of people sitting outside the house where he went to breed the cow, and most of them followed Garry to watch. 

It was a holiday, the 30th anniversary of Ukraine's independence after the Soviet Union, so I think they had visitors.

There's a lot of billboards on the highway commemorating the event, they cleverly incorporated the Ukrainian trident symbol into the flower design. 

PS, the custom guy chopper is ready to go this morning...