cellar tour and fertilizer

Only looks like snow






Today Garry did more cultivating, and spread some fertilizer this afternoon. I think he broke up some fertilizer and Max spread it. This year Garry is excited he found some real 15-15-15 fertilizer to buy, but he also needed to use up the bags of leftover urea from last year's corn planting. When they planted the corn last year they had a couple teen boys from the village pounding on the bags so they could get it into, and run through, the planter. So you can imagine how very solid that fertilizer is now that it has sat under the machine shed for a year. Garry got quite a workout pounding on the bags and pushing it through the screen on the back of the spreader with a 2 by 4.






The guys gave Andrei the morning off, so he was using the washer- we are out of detergent (the guys use way more than I do while washing half loads) but he solved the problem by walking to the magazine (store) a buying a tiny box of Tide. He was back on this afternoon, shoveling up some of the new load of brewers grain to feed the cows. They had not bought fresh stuff since the big freeze, using up all the bagged stuff. Garry was very happy with it, he said there was no spoilage in the agbags they filled in July, the only time they couldn't feed it after they started in December, was when it was too cold and it froze solid. He wishes he could use it for corn silage, the pile is getting really small, the hay better start growing. Next year, Garry says he will plant rye in the fall for feeding in the spring.








Today when I told Garry I was out of onions, he told me I could get them from the cellar myself (actually he said basement, but I just spent almost 3 weeks in New Jersey, and after seeing it, that is a cellar.) He has gone down and bought me back onions ever since he put them there in the fall. I have never gone down the steep little stairs since we got here almost three years ago. I had to ask where the light switch was, and this afternoon when I decided to make dinner I wanted onions, so I when down and got the rest of them- the good ones just filled my little box, and brought up the last three cabbages. I know that people here in Ukraine keep them all winter, and peel off the rotten and moldy leaves and eat the white cabbage, and I've been using them all winter for cooking and marinated salads, but there was a lot more rotten stuff under the dried out layers now, so I ended up keeping just that little one in the photo, and tossing the other two. Now the veggies are cleaned out of the cellar excexpt for the milker ladies canning on the shelves. Of course I still have lots of jam, salsa, green beans and corn in the freezer, we'll be eating out of the garden all year. I had been freezing enough vegetables to feed Seth and Jonah this fall, before they started school ahead of my original schedule.

Anyway, I decided it looks very built in 1904 down there, so I went down again to take some photos. The ceiling is curved like the arch room (which was the chimney/fireplace in the original design of the house) and the stairs look like they may have been built without nails, with the steps notched in.

calves and signs of spring

Thursday we had a new heifer calf, the black and white one, it joined two red and white heifer calves in the hutches, apparently they finally got Maxim's bull calves out of the hutches while I was gone. I was bugging Garry about the newborn heifer calves going into a pen with older ones in the barn instead of the hutches he had built for them. Cute little girls aren't they?














The crocus are blooming, the winter wheat fields are greening up nicely, and the maple trees are in bud, it is really looking like spring. Today was overcast except the sun came out for a while this afternoon, but not enough to dry out my laundry I hung out.
















It was too wet to cultivate, so Garry and Andrei were working on the flower bed Garry wanted to put in on the side of the house, next to the babushka's yard. She looked over the fence to check it out while they were in for lunch, then worked in her front yard all afternoon. She spends hours cleaning up around her house.
















Her chickens were in our yard this afternoon, including the pretty rooster as Garry calls him, he was out here crowing while I was hanging out sheets. She calls them and chases them back in the coop in the evening. The puppy - I don`t think anyone has given her another name yet- got loose and was racing around the yard, chasing cats up the trees. Except Mooska, she hissed at her and refused to run away! Apparently I was wrong, it did dry out enough to cultivate, Garry just came in and said he had finished cultivating the smaller field.













Here`s some real horsepower, I took this one on Saturday when Victor was out, I am not sure what the guy was doing, he sat across the road with his horse for a while, and seemed to be signalling the guys down by the pond when he was standing up in the wagon.

What, it's not Easter today???

On Friday Garry told me it wasn't Easter on Sunday. Of course, it is Easter at home in Canada, but not here in Ukraine. This is the third Easter we have been in Ukraine, and we had not noticed this before, so I did a little research on wikipedia. Turns out that Easter - the date of which changes every year, falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, ever since 325, when Council of Nicea decided it. The different Easter dates are because the Eastern churches, like the Orthodox church here in Ukraine follow the Julian calendar for setting the date, instead of the Gregorian one. The last two years Easter here happened to be on the same Sunday as at home, but this year Ukrainian Easter is a week later, and in 2012 Easter will be on March 31st in North America, and on May 5th here. So I will know what's up next year!



Today it was foggy for the entire drive from the village to church. We had a sermon about Palm Sunday, and I noticed many people carrying bunches of pussy willow branches today in the city, I don't know if you can tell in the photo. It seems that they are traditional here for Orthodox believers, like you might see palm branches in some churches at home.











So I can wait til next week to practice my Chris-tos vos Chris-t which is Christ is Risen and everyone will be saying it to everyone in the street next week with the reply of He is risen indeed (which I need to practice- it seems to have left my mind since last year.)

Garry tells me he found out that in Soviet times Easter was "replaced" with a Clean up Day, so there are jokes of how they replaced a holiday with a work day. It seems to be the holiday of the year with many people keeping Lent, and non-religious people enjoying a party for the spring holiday time. There will be colored eggs and paska bread to share, and the Monday after is also a holiday next week.

Planting

Well the alfalfa is planted and is being cultipacked as I write at 6:30 pm. It took Maxim a little longer than Garry thought to get the seed in the ground today. Yesterday afternoon the sunshine had dried the land enough that they finished preparing the ground, and they borrowed a roller -it's a big cylinder that flattens the ground to make it smoother after discing which broke up the plowed furrows on the land we were going to plant alfalfa on.



Garry went over to borrow a cultipacker just before lunch - he had a meeting in Zaporosia this morning about the new project at the collective farm- when he got there he discovered that it had a soft tire. Unfortunately he did not have an air compressor and no one there at the farm had one to use. The tractors here all have a compressor attached to them right at the factory, but the one on the loader tractor was disconnected when the loader was attached, and never fixed. So he phoned me while I was cooking dinner to come with the car so he could use the little air compressor that attaches to the cigarette lighter. So I turned everything down or off on the stove and drove to Molozaharina.




Garry has been there thousands of times, but I have been there maybe twice, so he had to give me directions- out to the other highway, turn right, second village to the right. Garry drove through the fields with the tractor, but the highway directions were easier to follow. After the tire was inflated, he drove back that way and I took the highway, getting back before him and soon enough to finish cooking the vegetables for dinner.

Victor joined us for dinner, he was in the village working with the irrigation project- it is taking a little longer than I thought to get the pipes together, since it is a group project, there seems to be as much talking as working on it.





Maxim was still out in the field to Garry's surprize, it turned out the seeder was not putting on as much seed as they thought it was set for, and he had to go over the fields twice and he still had some seed in the planter. Garry found this out when he brought Max lunch, as you can see in the photo. Which is why the packing didn't happen until later in the day, since they needed to use the same tractor. The loader does not detach from the loader tractor, it is more permanent than at home, and it does not like the bouncing across the field. The cultipacker will firm the ground so the seed has good contact and dry out slower while it is sprouting. Max also seeded a couple little gardens for people first. Garry got some seeds planted in the garden today peas and spinach, as the skies are threatening the rain in the forecast for the next week.

We need more land in alfalfa so we will have enough hay to feed the cows next winter. Right now the ration has straw in it since the hay is all gone, we still have grrain, corn silage, and are buying (and selling) brewers' grain.

Sunny days

The sun is out later this morning after a surprize rain yesterday afternoon. Garry has decided to look for a new internet weather forcast- the one he has been checking for the last three years had a 0% chance of rain for yesterday (and through the weekend) even as it clouded up and rained. Maxim told him that the televison and radio were both calling for rain. They were planning to plant alfalfa seed today, but it will need to dry out more before that happens.

It did not rain a lot but it did really rain for a while, there are a few puddles outside. The temperature has finally gotten up to about 20 C (70 F) this week. I took this picture of the babususka out in her yard in the rain around 6 pm, I am not sure why she was out there when it was raining more, but her chickens were still running around. You can see she is wearing her red kerchief, I think it must be her favorite.

Maybe she thought it smelled better, this morning she complained to Maxim about the horrible smell, she can hardly work outside (it is odd since there are manure piles in the village that have stood for years, and ours gets moved to the field every couple weeks) but hen she asked if she could have a few liters of gas... so maybe it was just her opening to ask for a freebie.

The trencher guy was done yesterday before lunchtime, Garry spent three hours yesterday afternoon digging holes by hand with some guys for the connections on the waterline, he says he dug the most. I keep telling him he doesn't have to keep showing off, and let someone else work, he was asleep by nine pm.

Up and at it

Wednesday morning and apparently I am over jetlag! I was awake at 7 am, ready to start the day (not quite the same as the previous mornings) Garry is itching to use the new cultivator, but decided it was too wet again today, so he has been working on cleaning up the yard here at the house. The milker ladies started this project this week, I guess spring has really sprung, even if everyone is still wearing coats in the village. Garry picked me these wildflowers on Monday.



They use a blanket to cleanup the dead leaves, as you can see in the photo, and bundle it up over there shoulder to carry them away.














Garry took a photo of the hedgehog they found this morning while cleaning the yard, he curled up in a ball and ignored them. They spent 200 grivna so far on cleanup, the police stopped them when they took a load of stuff to the dump, and they had to pay a straffe (fine) because the trailer doesn`t have a licence - we can`t get one either, you can only get one for a new trailer.






Yesterday Garry had a dentist appointment in downtown Dnepro to get a filling done, her office moved and the prices have gone up to reflect the better address. I sat and read while I waited for him, at one point the receptionist came over and turned off the light over my head, I guess she thought one light turned on in the waiting room was enough. It is across from PASSAGE the new mall, we had some lunch at McDonalds before walking to MOST CITY Centre, the nearby mall where we go bowling. Garry won all the games this time, but I did have a nice streak of spares going for a while.

Too bad that I did not throw a camera in my bag for the trip to Dnepro, we saw a white horse pulling a wagon down the side of the highway at the city limit loaded with bags, and in front of the carousel in the square between PASSAGE and McDonalds there was a musical group playing and selling CD`s beaded bracelets and dream catchers. As you may have guessed, they were three guys in Native American dress, complete with feathered head dresses, and they looked like the real thing. Maybe it is a cultural exchange.








Tractors keep going past the window, which gets the dogs barking- ours and mostly the babushka`s next door. She`s out and about today, I just saw her chasing her chickens back in the coop after they spent the day out hunting goodies in the new green grass. Box is sleeping in the sunny windowsill, she seems to be recovering nicely for her surgery, as you can see in the photo they operated on her side, and shaved a big patch of hair off of her.






Monday night Maxim had a meeting in Zaporosia for his and Yulia`s first pre-martial session with his pastor. It was an eventful drive, Max noticed a machine going down the highway and flagged it down, honking the horn, because he wanted a price quote. The waterline for the village irrigation hit a snag when the price to get the line trenched in had doubled from what they expected. They had planned a meeting with the members in the project on Saturday because they needed more money, either for the the original people or get more people to join up. Today (and tomorrow) the line is getting trenched in because this guy agreed to do it for the price they planned on. Garry took some photos for me this afternoon. With school out for spring break they had a crew of guys to help put the pipe in the ground.








Max`s return trip was even more eventful, the clutch cable broke on the the car. Max stopped at a nearby grocery store and bought a shislik stick (a metal skewer) and used it to make a temporary repair to drive home. The next morning it was fixed for real for 20 grivna. Lada parts and labor- you got to love the price.






I have been helping Garry with the new puzzle I bought him while I was in NJ, the rest will go much slower, as the bottom of the puzzle is mostly patchwork quilt, with an old-fashioned farm scene across the top, with cows. Days are much longer, now that it is April, it is 6:30 and it won`t be dark for at least an hour. In fact it was more than a hour before Garry drove the man back to Zaporosia, he is leaving his machine here overnight.

Long trip back...

Goodbye to New Jersey



I had a nice couple weeks with my parents and siblings even got to see our granddaughters who flew in to see great grandpa and gramma with their parents and Seth and Jonah (who is even taller than at Christmas)for March break on Monday last week.




I flew out Thursday afternoon but ended up in Toronto for an extra day when I missed the flight to Vienna (Air Canada paid since they had cancelled my original flight out of Newark and the second one landed 20 minutes late- right when I was to fly and they couldn't get me on another until the next night) so Garry picked me up in Kiev on Saturday afternoon.






Back in Ukraine




We drove back to the village Sunday morning, after listening to rain and sleet hitting the windows of our hotel that night. We drove through rain and some clearing skies, past fields that are now bare, they were snow covered when I left on the 11th of March. We saw a couple cranes in the nests in a few villages and saw and heard -when we rolled down the window to take a photo- a flock of hundreds of geese flying overhead in one area, so spring must be finally arriving in Ukraine.










The winter wheat fields are starting to green up, and a few tractors were in the fields -where it wasn't raining! One town had a busy market going in the rain as we drove through. There are still a few craters in the road between here and there, but Garry swerved around them.









We drove that new highway that was finished in December shortly before getting back to the village, it has smooth asphalt and shiny guard rails - only one spotted that is bashed on the side we were on, Garry said he counted seven going the other way. Polo and the cats were excited to see me when we got home.






Back in the village








I took some pics of Garry's new equipment today, the new (really new- they discovered that a new from the factory one was not much more than used ones are selling for)cultivator arrived on Thursday and the used (new to us) baler came shortly after I left for NJ. Apparently they discovered something was broken on it after they paid for it, but I think Garry is happy with it, we'll see how it works this summer. Used balers sell for more than they do in Canada, mostly because it si so difficult to import equipment.





That big roll of plastic pipe is for the water irrigation project in the village, they are getting things organized to put it in the ground so this summer all the gardens that are joining up should look good during the dry summer.