Update- trip planning

 I got some photos from Sofia's second birthday in the village. The students all said hello. 

The birthday girl with her mom Alona (and Angelina)

Sofia with brother Danil

Valentina and son

Kolya and Oksana's little girl

The wheat harvest was not as good (in amount) as last year because of the lack of rain, but it was higher quality (also because of the dry weather- no nasty mold on the grain) so they are able to sell it easier than last year, as it made the grade that makes flour for domestic use. 

For a month or so they had rolling electricity blackouts, which lasted for 4 to 8 hours at a time, since Russia had damaged so much of the power generation. Now the power is back to normal, but the price has skyrocketed, so the farm has gone to twice a day milking, instead of three times a day. 

Garry is making plans to be in Ukraine in October to help them put a new roof on the dairy barn to replace the one the tornado took off this spring. They may even rebuild the hay shed that was destroyed.

Apparently we can get our photo in the paper even when we aren't there. The article is about our farm that has orphans  and the cheeses they make and sell as Farmer Garry brand. They recently got a contract to provide 15 stores in the city of Zaporosia with cheese and kefir. Unfortunately, they had to stop making a few products in July with the power outages affecting safe production.