Chickens and cheese

 Here's some photos of the newest enterprises of the farm. Garry went to the city with Oleg last week when they sold cheese and other products. He goes once a week to Dnipro and once to Zaporosia to deliver orders, they take orders over the internet. 

They make and sell cheeses and frozen products like ready to cook vereniki (you might call them perogies) with cheese or potato fillings, or meat filled ones (they have a different name, but I can't think of it now). They are made by some ladies from the village that work for us, some of whom are refugees from southern Ukraine. Garry took some photos of them vacuum packing cottage cheese. He says they start cheese making with Elena about two in the afternoon and are out in the cheese house building until after midnight working. 

They are having an event in Zaporosia next Saturday with cheese tasting, here's one of the publicity ads. Garry will be there, it's a few days before he leaves on the train to go to Poland.

Here's some photos of the barn that Jack and the guys help work on in the spring with Garry. Over the  months since March, Max and the guys have finished putting on the roof, coated the outside walls, rebuilt the doors and made more pens inside. There are about a thousand chickens now, some for meat and some for eggs (they sell both with the cheese in the city). Garry sent a photo of the girls getting chickens ready for sale, but I didn't include it. 

The chickens are fed a combination of ground corn and wheat (grown on the farm) mookooka (the crushed sunflower seeds after they are pressed for oil) plus purchased protein and mineral mix.