We are doing well and are getting adjusted to life here. The weather was very warm in the 90’s a few weeks ago, but now it is in the 50-60’s and raining a lot. We are guessing that winter isn’t far away!
We are finally moved in to our apartment after a month of “tomorrows”. It is small, but we expected that. They have done a nice job remodeling it. We have a new bathroom, floors, doors, heaters, walls and paint. The colors they chose are pastel green, orange, and purple. So, it reminds us of Easter! It will suit us fine as we don’t expect to be able to spend much time here after the cows arrive.
On the weekends there is a large open market in town. We go there on Saturday mornings and buy all of our fruit and vegetables. We bought several bags of vegetables for $4. A lot of the vegetables come from local gardens and the old ladies wait to sell you their produce. The market is quite large and has everything you can imagine from cloths to bikes to TV’s. Most of the stuff is from China; so we have our own little Wal-Mart! We of course have a small grocery store and many convenience stores. The very large grocery stores are an hour away in Belgorod.
We believe we are the first Americans to step foot in this town. At least you would think so by the reactions we get! Everybody is very nice and patient with our poor Russian language skills! We are learning new words every day but are very far from carrying on a conversation! Luckily we have a very good interpreter at the farm. But we are on our own in the evenings and weekends.
We have finished chopping corn silage. It was a painfully slow process considering we have three choppers and 16 semi-trucks. The problem is the distance we have to haul and getting people to work more than eight hours per day. But I am pleased with the quality.
We are finishing storing 2500 tons of barley and wheat in Ag-Bags. This has gone very well. We will start harvesting high moisture corn soon. We have 2000 acres to combine. Hopefully the weather cooperates. Sugar beet harvest is in full swing. I have never seen so many beets! At home 40 acres of beets is a lot. Here there are 500 acre fields of sugar beets. There is an endless parade of trucks hauling to the plant. The sunflowers have all been sprayed by a plane to make them dry quicker. They are now all brown and I would guess that they are close to harvest.
The first ship load of 1100 cows is still delayed. With this being the first cows to come to Russia from the U.S. everybody is being extra cautious. They are now in the middle of a second 30 day quarantine in Oklahoma. The last date we heard was an arrival of October 28. The second ship load of 1500 cows will be selected in the next few weeks and then go through their quarantine process. At this point we are hoping that they get delayed too so that we don’t have them all arrive at once.
With no cows to manage, we have decided to make a quick trip back to Michigan while we have time. We will fly home from Moscow on Friday and will be in the U.S. until mid-October. We plan to go to Wisconsin for the World Dairy Expo, we have a meeting in Nebraska and then we may head for Oklahoma to check on the cows. We will know more definite plans in the next week or two.
Hope to see you all soon!
We are finally moved in to our apartment after a month of “tomorrows”. It is small, but we expected that. They have done a nice job remodeling it. We have a new bathroom, floors, doors, heaters, walls and paint. The colors they chose are pastel green, orange, and purple. So, it reminds us of Easter! It will suit us fine as we don’t expect to be able to spend much time here after the cows arrive.
On the weekends there is a large open market in town. We go there on Saturday mornings and buy all of our fruit and vegetables. We bought several bags of vegetables for $4. A lot of the vegetables come from local gardens and the old ladies wait to sell you their produce. The market is quite large and has everything you can imagine from cloths to bikes to TV’s. Most of the stuff is from China; so we have our own little Wal-Mart! We of course have a small grocery store and many convenience stores. The very large grocery stores are an hour away in Belgorod.
We believe we are the first Americans to step foot in this town. At least you would think so by the reactions we get! Everybody is very nice and patient with our poor Russian language skills! We are learning new words every day but are very far from carrying on a conversation! Luckily we have a very good interpreter at the farm. But we are on our own in the evenings and weekends.
We have finished chopping corn silage. It was a painfully slow process considering we have three choppers and 16 semi-trucks. The problem is the distance we have to haul and getting people to work more than eight hours per day. But I am pleased with the quality.
We are finishing storing 2500 tons of barley and wheat in Ag-Bags. This has gone very well. We will start harvesting high moisture corn soon. We have 2000 acres to combine. Hopefully the weather cooperates. Sugar beet harvest is in full swing. I have never seen so many beets! At home 40 acres of beets is a lot. Here there are 500 acre fields of sugar beets. There is an endless parade of trucks hauling to the plant. The sunflowers have all been sprayed by a plane to make them dry quicker. They are now all brown and I would guess that they are close to harvest.
The first ship load of 1100 cows is still delayed. With this being the first cows to come to Russia from the U.S. everybody is being extra cautious. They are now in the middle of a second 30 day quarantine in Oklahoma. The last date we heard was an arrival of October 28. The second ship load of 1500 cows will be selected in the next few weeks and then go through their quarantine process. At this point we are hoping that they get delayed too so that we don’t have them all arrive at once.
With no cows to manage, we have decided to make a quick trip back to Michigan while we have time. We will fly home from Moscow on Friday and will be in the U.S. until mid-October. We plan to go to Wisconsin for the World Dairy Expo, we have a meeting in Nebraska and then we may head for Oklahoma to check on the cows. We will know more definite plans in the next week or two.
Hope to see you all soon!
1 comment:
Good to hear from you. The information is very interesting. The pictures are great. Hope you're enjoying you new apartment and shopping in Russia. Our plan is to leave for Texas on the 16th of October. We hope that we can touch base with you before we leave. If not please keep us posted.
Thank You
Tuffy and Char Wolfrom
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