New Jersey

 

My father lost his 12 year battle with multiple myeloma cancer Wednesday evening, I had been here with him for about two weeks, helping out my siblings as he wanted to stay at home on the farm with his dog Jackie beside him and Little Kitty sleeping on his bed. It will be nine years in July since my mother passed away. and my sisters and brothers spent a lot of time helping him when he was sick, as he has had several bouts with pneumonia that had him recovering from hospital stays over the years.

In high school I decided I wanted to be a dairy farmer like my dad, because I enjoyed working with cows and showing cows at the fair for 4-H. That's how the big dairy farm in Manitoba came to be, because I met Garry showing cows at the Burlington County Fair and gave up my dream of being a solo female farmer.

Garry and a couple of the kids are flying in tomorrow for the funeral on Monday. My dad lived on the family farm for 85 years and rarely went very far from it, except to visit family.  

Garry went Fishing

 Garry went ice fishing at Birch Point last week and caught a jack (pike) he plans to hang on the wall at the cottage, 41 1/2 inches and I think he said around 17 pounds. He caught a pickerel that he cooked for lunch when he was at the cottage.

Messages from Ukraine

 As I was leaving for NJ, Garry talked to Vlad (Valera's brother), one of our former students, in Ukraine. Vlad joined the army in the summer. He was injured in the recent fighting and was in hospital with head injuries, three pieces of shrapnel removed and a concussion. He was talking about some other injuries, hand, I think. His friend that speaks more English is in the same room. It sounded like they were hit by artillery fire from a tank.

We had heard that the other Max from the first year of the trade school (not the one who came to Canada) that has been in the army was in hospital with a hand injury. 

Jack from BC is thinking of going to Ukraine with Garry and a couple other guys at the end of March to work on replacing the barn roof. Plans are still being figured out. Of course it will depend on conditions in Ukraine.

I forgot to put photos of some of the cheese they are making and selling in my last post. Garry says he tried some of the ones in the jars when he was there, and it was tasty. The round one is a new soft cheese they're making that can be fried. 

The latest product for sale is butter, one piece of equipment purchased this past year was an electric butter churn. Here's a peek into the first batch.

Hello, it's me...

 

I haven't written a post in a couple weeks, we were out at the cottage for a lot of the time. Garry even caught a few fish, and we enjoyed some family time. Last weekend Garry went to the mens retreat from church which was very near the cottage and I got to drive the truck (we had brought the snowmobile out to the cottage, it is finally working) into Winnipeg to watch the Flyers-Jets game. 

Apparently, I was lucky to make it back to the cottage, since the truck stopped and died on Garry Sunday afternoon on his way back to the cottage. He walked a mile, arriving just in time for kickoff of the NFC championship game. At halftime he tried starting it again (he took the snowmobile there) and after the game we both went to try it, it was bitterly cold, and it turned over but didn't keep running.

Monday afternoon someone came out from the farm and we loaded it up on a trailer and got a ride home. 

I spent a couple days getting some stuff done at the house before Garry dropped me off at the airport on Thursday, I am in New Jersey for a while, my dad is not doing well after about 13 years of fighting cancer.

So I am enjoying green grass, and starting today, temperatures above freezing outside (when I arrived it was nearly Manitoba cold). 

Back in Ukraine, things are safe in the village, however they have had some problems selling milk to the factory. If the factory has no electricity they can't process milk, so the truck might not come buy milk. They actually used the big cheese making equipment for the first time in our cheese making building, it has such a big motor they had to turn everything in the house off to run it from what Max said. They are making a new type of cheese to sell. They are still selling the cheeses, eggs and chicken meat via the internet to people in Dnipro. 

They finally got the rest of the corn combined (Garry discovered it wasn't all done as we'd supposed in the fall), it was very wet- 23%, too wet to store in the barns without heating up and spoiling, so it was sold for a very low price (50 dollars a ton, I think I heard), although if it had been dry the price in Ukraine wouldn't have been much better, compared to world price. Garry says this spring they will only plant what they need for corn silage.  Just a bit of snow over there, as you can see in this photo.