This week

 It's been a different week. At the beginning of the week, Garry thought it wouldn't be very busy, but it managed to be as busy as we've been all summer.

You could say it had highlights, and lowlights. They harvested almost all the sunflowers now, they sold three truckloads right out of the field when the combined on Thursday. The field was so good, there were more than that, so they sqeezed them in somewhere, since there's still wheat on one side of the Quonset. The old one, because no one has shown up to build the new one, even though Max had a phone call that they'd be here last weekend. There's just that little field planted after they cut that wheat for silage.

More than half the winter wheat is planted, and three days of rain is predicted, starting Sunday, which it really needs to get growing, as it is still dry. 

The cows are making more milk, and the price has risen a bit too, as fall is here. 

This week Victor did a Mennonite tour. A few months ago, an American couple contacted us, looking for Victor Penner's contact informantion, as they couldn't reach him. They had stopped here with him three years ago. Unfortunately we had to tell him that he had died last year. However, our friend Victor also does Mennonite tours, so we gave them his contact info. They had eight relatives coming to visit Ukraine and wanted to show them them where their ancestors lived. That was why Victor had gotten the old blue van on the road. Two weeks ago, the van broke down, so Victor was going to use ours instead. However, ten guests wouldn't fit, so Garry drove our van and Victor his brown car with four people. Since there was room, I tagged along for the first day, down to the Moloshka colony area. We went to the Mennonite Center, the old windmill and some villages where their relatives lived.

We dropped them off before six and took Victor out for a steak dinner. There was a huge traffic jam leaving Zaporosia (because of a fender bender on the dam bridge) and we didn't get home until eight thirty!

Thursday morning they were off around seven, not as early as Wednesday,  to pick them up for day two of the the tour. I went for the morning walk I skipped the day before, and then made some breakfast pizza, since they were coming here for a tour of the farm and the village first. I went with them to Khotithsa before we had to take them to meet their train. We saw some old Mennonite buildings, the old oak tree, and got a look inside the former Kroger clock factory, which is now a church. The ladies there took photos of it in the pages about in Victor's book.

It was a fun tour, with hugs at the end, as they went off on the train at 3:30 to explore other parts of Ukraine.

We raced off to breed a cow in the village and Garry had two English classes in Dnepro starting at five. I took the van and bought some tools for cleaning yards for Oleg to use with some of the boys, and some groceries. We got home after nine. Once again, Garry was asleep soon after.

Friday Garry caught up on farm stuff, breeding seven cows, including some of the new heifers in the headlock pen. I used some of the groceries for my student cooking class, we made oatmeal cooked with garlic and chicken broth, topped with fried mushrooms and onions and an egg. Topped by their choice of ketchup or mayo.

We had to go into Dnepro to meet someone at five, we left home aroud 3:30, Garry stopped at the New Holland dealer to talk about buying a tractor, after the meeting at the cafe (where I drank a pot of green tea) we had to go somewhere close to Victor's house. Garry mentioned buying gas on the way home as we left.  It was after six  and traffic was heavy, stop and go downtown,  and we ran out of fuel on Kiriva Street (it has a new name but we never remember). Sitting in the middle of the three lanes, shortly before a light. Flashers on. It gets dark around seven pm now. 

Called Victor. No answer, try again, and again. Called the guy we'd met. He brought us diesel and we got it going again. The place we had to go we closed by the time we arrived, but we used the bathroom and got dinner at the mall around eight pm. Garry drove home after buying diesel before leaving the city. Home after nine, and right to bed for him!

Yesterday evening  they did a load of cement