The long trip home... to be continued....now updated

Today our friends are away, but Victor brought Doreen out with him for the day anyway (she has been in Dnepropetroesk for the last week since leaving Kramatorsk - what a way to end your career in missions -to evacuate a week before you planned to retire.) She says she finds it relaxing out here on the farm with us. This morning she enjoyed talking with Maria, who has been here this week, working and enjoying our Easter egg hunt on Tuesday (the grass was finally dry enough.)

Today it was finally dry enough to try to plant some more corn - the 10 acres they planted on Friday has two roots already- if you wonder how I know that, Garry digs some up to look until it comes up so he can count leaves to see how it is growing - Garry went out with the guys before 8 am to change the depth that the seed would be placed, shallower since the ground was still pretty wet. He came back before 10 am, but then Max phoned and he drove back to the field to see what was going on. He stayed out until there was a sudden downpour at 1 pm, just as I was dishing up dinner to go out to the field- hamburgers, potatoes, gravy, pepper slices, and deviled eggs (the last of the dyed eggs) and bread. Maria and Doreen had walked to the store for the bread just before the rain hit (there was even thunder) but they said they didn't get wet because they were in the store when the rain came down. It turned out everyone but the guys working in the new barn were in the house for lunch, after I had filled the disposable bowls.  Andrey drove their lunch over on the scooter, but I forget to include forks, so they found a spoon in the barn and shared it!

Doreen gets a photo of the calf in the van

After a quick lunch, Garry went to the barn to load up a month old bull calf - one of the 75% Holstein calves. It was a little later than planned yesterday, but he and Maria headed off with it to an orphanage about two hours away. They had visited the orphanage with a man from Zaporosia a couple of months ago, and Garry had been asked how they could improve their cows. That's right, this orphanage has a herd of 25-30 cows and they feed the milk produced by their herd to the children. Garry had said that if they could get some Holstein blood in their cows the offspring would give more milk, so they decided to trade calves - one of theirs for one of our 75% percent Holstein bulls. However, Garry decided it would be easier to just take a calf one way, so it turned into a donation.

 I talked to him a couple hours ago and they had just unloaded the calf and were going to the office to sign some paperwork to say it was a donation. He was still hoping to make it home in time for us to go to the Bible study in Zaporosia.

Just before six, he called to say we would not make it there, because the car had broken down in Melitopol. He said the battery light had come on, so he had turned off the lights (you have to have them on when driving or the police will stop you and threaten to ticket you Garry is constantly forgetting to turn then on) but it eventually stopped. He and Maria were walking to the bus station in  Melitopol   Vasillivka  to get a marshutka back this way when he phoned.

Hopefully he will get home tonight....
it is a really nice looking bull calf, though!

They made it back at 8:20 as it was getting dark, they walked fast from the highway where the bus stopped to the house, no cars came past on the road into the village until they were almost there, so they did not get a ride....  but they are safely home. He will return to get the car tomorrow, hopefully.

Gasoline costs more now! or the floating grivna and how it affects life in Ukraine

Cheap gas?  the bottom price is propane

With the fall of the recent government the policy of keeping the grivna exchange at about eight to a US dollar was discontinued and it was allowed to float. It went to about 10, which is where most economists thought it belonged, and it did not affect prices too much although we could buy more with our dollars when we exchanged money.
 However, in recent weeks, some days the exchange fluctuated wildly, up to as high as 15:1 or more. In the last week it has stabilized between 10-11. Garry heard that some Russian banks (there are many that operate in Ukraine) were suspected of adversely influencing it, and have been barred from the exchange rate setting.

Prices in the grocery store have risen, however, especially on imported goods. The salted butter we buy to spread on bread...yes, we North Americans are so used to eating salted butter that the normal unsalted butter just tasted bad on toast or whatever and a few months after moving here, friends told us about the Presidents brand in the green packages that read salted French butter, and we buy it, even though it is much more expensive, and Garry has complained, every time he noticed that it had gone up to 17 grivna.... for 200 grams... now it is over 26 ... really about the same price, though, for us, but not for the people was are living on only 1000 (a good old age pension) or 1500 grivna a month. The price of the loaf of bread in the village has not changed much, which is good.

The price of gas was pretty stable for the last couple years around 11 grivna a liter and diesel (which the tractors and our new car run on) was around 9. Now they are both around 15 grivna , I have seen some for 16. This means we fill up the car for 600 instead of 400 grivna, and it is the same thing when filling two tractors (except they have much bigger fuel tanks) that are both running all day spreading fertilizer, harrowing, cultivating and/or planting.

Garry went to breed a cow yesterday morning, a big white step van pulled into the driveway just as we were going to drive out, so we delayed our trip to Dnepro. He said the family there were friends of Max Rudei, and live in a nearby village. They showed him the bull calf from the cow Garry bred last year and the heifer calf from the one Max bred. They grow about 30 acres of vegetables each year, but cannot plant any this spring because the loan for planting that they were supposed to get last month has become unavailable because of the fluctuating grivna.

Baby, baby!

The hat is behind the eggs and Paska bread 

Monday morning it was not raining as we left the village to go to the gym in Zaporosia. Maxim Rudei came to work just we were leaving and said that his wife Yulia had gone to hospital at 1 am, and the baby should come around 8 or 9 am. Garry asked him why he was here if the baby was coming, but he said he would go later, her mother was there with her.







 We got a call from Max around noon, when we were back in the village. The baby girl had just arrived and weighed in around 3 kilos  (or about 6 1/2 lbs). I heard that her name is Victoria, Vika for short and that she has lots of black hair, too. Luckily that morning I finished crocheting the pink hat to match the booties had I made for her, so I gave Max the bag full of presents for her. I think they are coming home on Thursday.

Garry went to breed a cow in the village yesterday (Monday) and he got a present with his payment from one of Yulia's relatives, Paska bread and Easter eggs. You can see two of them were dyed with onion skins after applied leaves with wax. The others are the plastic shrink wraps that are sold in all the stores here and have cartoon-like characters on, the yellow one has a cow on it.

At one time there was an air force base near Zap

As we got closer to the city, it started to rain pretty hard, as you can see in the photo I took along the highway. Since it was raining most of the weekend, there were no tractors in the field on Monday. However, this afternoon they were able to get back to work in the fields, since the drainage is so good here. Garry is excited about how much moisture is in the ground, the corn should have lots of moisture, enough for the first month, anyway, even if it does not rain. The wheat will be growing like crazy now, with warm and wet weather.

 They hope to get some more corn planted on Wednesday. They only got about 10 acres planted on Friday, because even after they got the planter working better, the cheap fertilizer they bought turned out to be a mistake, it would not go through the planter.  They spread it with the spinner spreader on the field - which is bigger than I thought, 260 acres- on Saturday and today, which was sunny.   They had so much trouble with getting it on even with the spreader, they actually screened it through an old bed frame spring to break it up first. Garry says it has some kind of clay in it.

  In the morning they will harrow the field and start planting with some new fertilizer that they are buying in the morning, since they could not buy any sooner because of the Easter holiday, so the planter may be working by lunchtime.  Turns out that the extra fertilizer is needed as the soil samples Garry sent away show the soil is lacking potassium and potash in the extreme, the only good rating was for organic matter in the soil.  They did some more work over at the trade school barn (check for a new post- click on the bird photo), and spread some more of the bad fertilizer on another field that will be planted in corn,

Still wet and getting up soon after birth

This afternoon there was a different kind of baby girl born with the arrival of a heifer calf. The girls were excited about the heart marking on her face. Garry was more excited that she is 75% Holstein, and her first calf mother looks ready to give lots of milk. The 50% Holstein heifers are milking much better than the native Russian Red ones.


 The cows are milking pretty well we are making about 600 liters a day. Last week the buyers were trying to get all the milk they could to sell with the before Easter week rush. They can sell all they can get in the markets then, since you need milk to make Paska bread. Unfortunately, this week the price we sell it for drops with demand as the supply goes up and everyone's cows are eating green grass, so there is more for sale through spring and summer.

Maria watching Yana trying to get the calf back in front of her mother

Everyone is looking good

Some new baby ducks up the street out in the sunshine

Christ is Risen !

Easter dawned wet this morning in Ukraine. We drove into Dnepropetroesk for church this morning, just the two of us. Our Crimean visitors are elsewhere for the weekend, and the guys stayed in the village. Max Boradin and Andrey were impressed with what the Easter bunny brought them, since there were little baskets of candy for everyone on the table this morning.

However, with the rain coming down and hardly any marschutkas (vans) and buses on the road due the holiday, we stopped twice to pick up guys looking for rides. One guy dressed in black that we picked up walking along the highway in the rain and dropped off near the market in Bratskii (which was closed for Easter) said he was finally able to eat meat. Many people here fast and  keep Lent, even those who do not regularly attend the Orthodox church. We picked up the second guy on the other side of that town and dropped him off just at the edge of Dnepropetroesk. Both guys had trouble sliding the side door of the van shut, the interior light stayed on, they were trying to close it gently.

Spy camera shot (sorry for the quality)

We stopped at Mc Donalds for breakfast, which has become a Sunday morning tradition with us. Although it is packed the rest of the day, it is never busy for breakfast, Ukrainians are more likely to buy ice cream cones, which are sold before ten am, then other items off the breakfast menu. We noticed that three people sitting near us had brought their own drinks, not unusual here, but the first time I have seen beer bottles wrapped in Mc Donalds paper bags at breakfast!






Normally Easter morning we see lots of people walking with their baskets that they went to the Orthodox church to get blessed, but not as many today.... maybe some people were using plastic bags because of the rain! I did get a few snapshots as we drove through the city.

Even the billboard is for Easter (Paska)

We had wonderful music for Easter at Morningstar and even some special performances after the sermon. We saw our friend Doreen there, as she was brought here from Kramatoresk, where we have visited her a few times. She came to Dnepro on Wednesday as the Donetsk region had become more unstable, and came out to the farm for the day on Thursday. It was good to see some other friends there to worship, also. We received a few homemade Paska breads, too.

 We were going to decorate Easter cookies on Thursday when Doreen was here but we ended up just talking and eating the Napolean cake I had put together, so Friday night when Maria stayed over, the rest of us girls decorated Easter cookies.

There was even egg dying, we plan on an egg hunt sometime on Monday when our guests return...


Max and Andrey had eaten all their candy and were getting showered to go to the youth service in the village when we got home at three o'clock - they got home late from singing, Bible study and then shisklik (BBQ) 

The praise band on a special morning

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