Cropping this week

Getting ready to spray wheat on Tuesday evening

Look, Garry is working so hard he has no time for haircuts!

A little field tour

Alfalfa field across the highway on April 2nd 

The road through the fields is a little bumpy on Wednesday (April 16th)

That's our wheat field across the pond! last year it was corn

Checking the new alfalfa seeding

baby alfalfa plants

Spraying the wheat fields for weeds

a little frost damage on the wheat leaves

After spraying the wheat fields for weeds, the fields that will be in corn and sunflowers were also sprayed for weed control, before they are planted. The sunflower fields will be cultivated again to increase the weed kill to give them the best start.

The old alfalfa field is not looking so good yet

Ready to plant corn?

Sunflower and corn seed waiting to be planted

sunflower seed

more expensive seed from America

Much cheaper Ukrainian sunflower seeds

Moving the corn planter back to the street last week

It's too big to fit through the gates!

So the corn planter sat there all week waiting until Friday morning...first it was raining on Monday, then they had to spray the wheat for weeds and the corn and sunflower ground for weeds. ... so today they finally got it out to the field with some of the cheap Ukrainian corn seed (They bought 10 bags of Pioneer corn at 300 dollars a bag but this kind is about 20 dollars, I think, they hope to compare yields to see what is the best buy.)

Early this morning in front of the house

They had a long discussion about where to set the markers- those round things on the tall pieces at the ends of the planter. One of them is set down into the field while you are planting where it makes a line you can follow to plant the next row.  However, where to set them was discussed between Garry and the guys because Ukrainians set the tractor wheel on the mark, unlike North Americans, but Garry agreed to let the guys do it their way with his North American John Deere planter.

We are driving behind the planter down the street it takes up the whole road...Garry passed it in the grass

The rented "box" where the fertilizer is stored down the street

Inside the "lock box" 

Putting fertilizer in the planter - one of each type in the hoppers

One of the kinds of fertilizer they are using  

Ready, set, go!

What happened to the window on the bottom of the tractor?

 They thought they are all ready at nine am, but they are disappointed with the performance. They had to take off the fertilizer discs, turn something around.... were they on backwards? I can't remember, but it was putting it in too deep, I think I heard, but they had that fixed and were going across the field with it. Then they decided that the monitor (which tells you if the corn seed is being planted properly) didn't seem to work correctly. Just before noon Garry goes on the internet to hunt for a manual (the planter did not come with any) so at 2 o'clock they are still working the kinks out. . Last report- 7 of 8 rows are working on the monitor around three.

This field is close to the trade school barn- 160 acres? maybe?

You can see the barn right above the back corner of the planter

I know once they get it working correctly, it should roll thorough all the fields of corn to plant, and the sunflowers, too. A couple of the small farmers in the village have been doing some of the cultivating for our fields because they want to use the new planter to plant their fields this spring.

With all the problems with the big farmers fighting over the land, the little guys are only farming land that they have title to rent, instead of the way they did it with the old big farmer Pitlock, where they farmed acres together for convenience, based on total acres rented and which ones he wanted to let us have- normally the least desirable!

Closer to "home"

A couple of days ago, Garry went to breed a cow in a nearby village. He said that there was a babushka, a younger lady and small child there at the house where the cow needed to to bred. They had an old tractor and a little equipment but the grandmother said that "she did not know how she would get the crops planted this year, because her son was sleeping in a tank." He had been called up to the army and was working on fixing tanks north of Dnepropetroesk.

One of our next door neighbor has been called up, he is married and about forty years old, he says "how can I go, who will feed my pigs and what if his wife leaves him if he goes?"  Some of the troops near stationed near here have been moved over to eastern Ukraine, as you can see in the news.

Near Dnepropetroesk

When Garry drove to his class in Dnepropetjisk on Wednesday evening he discovered that the police and soldiers have set up new checkpoints on the big highways near the cities. We assume this is for added security in this area with what has been happening in the east, at one place they stopped him and opened the back of the van to see what was inside.

When they drove back (one of our guests and Maria had gone with him) they had to stop and buy gas so Garry bought a big bag full of semki (sunflower seeds) and Snickers bars and they left them with the guys at the Dnepropetjisk checkpoint, and then they drove through Mc Donalds in Dnepropetroesk and bought 25 cheeseburgers and gave them to the soldiers at the checkpoint in the photo around nine pm. Our guest is very good in Russian  and told them that we were Canadian and wanted to thank them for being there serving Ukraine. Maria said she watched from the car and all the guys were smiling and shaking hands with them.

Many cars have flags now

 One thing we have noticed in the last months is that we see so many Ukrainian flags in both Dnepro and Zaporosia, here are some photos I took yesterday evening when we drove to Zap for Bible study.

Someone has turned this Lenin profile Ukrainian on the city sign

There are billboards that say Zaporosia is Ukraine

Even this old van has one, and there is one on the pole at a bridge

 day is ending as the sun starts to set over the Dniper River as we drive over the dam

Good morning world!

It says "brothers?" on the billboard

Dough-bray oo-tra mir! (Good morning world) Yes, we are still here in Ukraine, although we do check the news more often to see what's going on in our part of the world... for more than six weeks Crisis in Ukraine has been at the top of the news with the murder trial in South Africa and the search for the missing plane on the BBC and CNN.

 Climate change is less important when you are living in a country where war could break out anytime, you find. You just try to ignore the elephant in the room and go on with life as normal. Garry phoned his mother in March for her birthday and she told him the same thing as our kids do, people they don't even know walk up to them and ask how we are doing and if we are leaving Ukraine.

Sunday morning on the way to church

A family walking to church with their umbrellas

At the moment, the answer is still no, although we are thinking about what to do if....

Garry is not planting corn today as planned, because we had an amazing big rain yesterday, after getting enough for puddles on Saturday, so it is too wet. Saturday they sprayed some of ground where they will be planting sunflowers with herbicide, because the only inexpensive spray available is used before planting. We have way more land to farm this year, so there is lots of corn and sunflowers to plant with the new planter.




Sunday morning we headed to church and as as we drove the sprinkles became rain drops on the windshield as we got closer to the city. The apricot trees are blooming everywhere, and some trees are even getting leaves.

 After church we ate at Mc Donalds and did the monthly visit with Lena's English classes at 2 pm for an hour. Everyone learning English wants to hear a native speaker.

Spring is here, trees are blooming and some are even green!

Rain is Ukraine makes Garry smile

Forsythia bushes in bloom in front of McD's

Garry talking to the English class

The space sculpture in the traffic circle near Dafi has a flag now

There are so many more Ukrainian  flags to be seen in Dnepropetroesk since the new government and the Crimean takeover. Maybe people have them on their cars, too. Yesterday we saw a tram downtown wearing a new ad- for Ukraine- the blue and yellow map of Ukraine includes Crimea, too.

Surprise Maxim- we're going to Egypt!

Garry decided to take Maria and Max with us on vacation after the big build, so my (hoped for) trip to Rome was out, and we got last minute tickets for an excursion to Sharm El Shiekh on the Sinai peninsula, Egypt. It is our third trip to the Red Sea resort area, but Maria (or Masha), who was Garry's translator at the trade school and Max Boradin, who was one of the students, finally got to use the international travel passports they got when we hoped to send the students to Canada last summer.

Garry came up with a plan to trick Max so he would not know where we were going, which sort of worked until we got the airport in Dnepro at 5 am, last Thursday morning and there were no flights to Simferopol. His cover story was we had to go there for Max's high school diploma (this fall he started working on this mostly on the internet but he had to go there for the exams, we are still not sure how this will work now that Crimea is part of Russia) Max had suspected something was going on, but decided to trust God that it would be good.

Sand, sun, swimming and camels at the beach!

Garry told people at the resort that they were our adopted Ukrainian kids (the first day I was not feeling well and resting while they went around in the afternoon, and he was tired of  people assuming he had a young Ukrainian girlfriend) and they enjoyed the week long stay. Max really enjoyed swimming in the Red Sea and playing volleyball on the beach.

 Everyone got lots of sun and we went out on a boat trip for snorkeling  to see the tropical fish and coral reefs and saw dolphins up close one afternoon. We arrived back here Thursday evening and our friends who stayed here while we were gone told us they attended the village church where Max goes on Sunday and during prayer time they asked for prayer for safety for us while we were in Crimea, so they put up their hands and let them in on the secret. The congregation were happy for him and  then prayed that Maxim would enjoy his rest by the sea.

We celebrated Max's 19th birthday on Wednesday and he was rather unhappy that we got the waiters to sing to him and present him with a cake with a candle for dinner. He had never had a party or a cake for his birthday growing up in the orphanage.

While we were gone we checked on the news from Ukraine on the BBC, and now that we are back it seems that Eastern Ukraine is still having problems, so we are checking out the news morning and night for developments, but Garry plans to start planting corn on Monday.

Spring has sprung

Willow getting leaves

This weekend the apricot trees and forsythia bushes sprang into bloom in the cities. Some of the trees have tiny green leaves popping out, even here in the village. It is not as warm as last week when the team was here, apparently they picked the best week to come, with it being colder both before and after they were here!

I took some photos while walking over to the barn last week, which we will call signs of spring in the village.

tiny wildflowers

Little Ukrainian flag flying high on a shed

Gardens are worked up and many are planted

Chickens have been out for the day for a month now

Just not spring until someone burns a manure pile...

This rooster has something to crow about...

The neighbor's chickens are in our yard...again

She got her garden harrowed on April 12th

Planting garden in your coat, before the team came.