Masha's Birthday

Today, my step-granddaughter Maria (Masha) is five years old. We went this morning to wish her happy birthday "С днем рожденья!" and take her her gifts. She is getting a cat for her birthday so we brought her a little house*/bed for the cat, water and food dishes and most importantly a litter box. Masha is so excited to finally have a "friend" (her words) in her apartment.

Later in the day her parents drove her to Dnipropetrovsk to buy a cat. She is allergic to some cats so they needed to find a cat with very little hair**. She phoned her Babushka a little while ago (she has her own phone, her mother's old mobile, which she uses mainly to call her Babushkas) to tell her they had purchased a non-pedigreed Scottish Blue.

*No comments please about cat houses.
** If a camel with no hump is called Humphrey, any suggestions what to call a cat with no hair?

Singin' the Blues

A coyote's cry under a full harvest moon may remind prairie dwellers of the vast loneliness of the western plains. The howl of a timber wolf on a cold winter night may send shivers down the spine of the Mountie in his lonely log cabin (on the fourth floor of RCMP headquarters in Ottawa). But when Bobik and Volk decide to serenade us at 2:00 am, our emotions are much different.
Usually when Tanya speaks to them they listen up but good. Not at night. They listen to me. When I yell at them out teh bedroom window, they quieten right down. It is like they understand "Shut up you stupid mutts or I'll beat you within an inch of your life". Their master's voice.

Still Beating After All This Time

Since we got back from Turkey, I have been increasingly tired to the point of exhaustion. By late afternoon, I could go to bed for the night but would still be tired in the morning. So this morning, Dr. Tanya, Veterinarian, decided to take my blood pressure. 120 over 80. Not bad in my books but my pulse was 50, then 45. No idea what this means other than I think I am suffering from a coffee deficiency but Tanya calls her friend Ira (pronounced Ear-a, short for Irina) a nurse who runs the Pharmacy Kiosk in our little grocery store.

Her doctor husband Valerie scoots over on his scooter to check me out and decides we need an ECG since I don’t have a recent one on me. In Ukraine, your medical records are yours and your responsibility to look after which makes more sense to me than the Canadian system where your doctor holds them captive in case you might want to see another doctor. Valerie calls the hospital which sends the ambulance. They bring in a cute portable ECG machine in a bag and start to hook it up. When they pull out all the cables and wires to attach to me, I ask if they learned their trade at the Lubyanka which gets a laugh (and Tanya repeats the joke the rest of the morning).

The doctor isn’t sure about the portable ECG readout so we are bundled into the ambulance and head for the hospital. The only thing which might have drawn more attention in our neighbour hood would have been if the police had taken me away with sirens and blue flashing lights. The ambulance is a mid-80’s full size van, with a driver and two “paramedics”, a stretcher, first aid kit, oxygen and portable ECG. On the way up the hill on Moscovskaya St., the ambulance flatlines so they call in a back up. It is an army-green Russian-built 4WD that by western standards should have seen service in the Spanish Civil War.

At the hospital I get another ECG which is taken upstairs to the cardiologist who reports back in a few minutes that it is good, no problems. A nurse comes and takes a blood sample for haemoglobin and sugar among other things. Twenty minutes later, the lab report is back. All is well. Blood sugar is 6 which is the high end of normal though it didn’t surprise me any, since I had scarfed down two kolbassa sandwiches along with a cup of coffee two hours earlier while waiting for the ambulance.

So Tanya is all happy. I will not die on her just yet. I am well and healthy, just need to eat more fruit and veggies and less sweets (and drink slightly more coffee and one cognac per day). I feel better already.

When I do pass on to my reward, she is supposed to cremate me and ship the ashes home in an urn to be dropped in a post hole in the family plot. It might be simpler just to give my corpse an enema and mail the body home in a shoe box.

I Jump Over the Wall

Bobik is being a brat. Brat, by the way, is the Russian word for brother (I can hear sisters everywhere saying Amen to that). He has discovered he can jump over the makeshift fence at the back of their yard. Bobik takes a running leap, hooks his front feet over and scrambles up and over to freedom. If I put him back in the yard, he is out and waiting at the front door for me before I get back. Volk just cannot figure it out so stays in his yard and crys by the gate.

Personally, I'd just let them both go but they roam the neighbourhood, chase chickens and cats and unforgiveably, hold wrestling matches in Tanya's flowerbeds. We have raised the fence several times but now need to rebuild it completely I guess.

Ukraine Wheat harvest

Last weekend we drove out to the village where my Step Daughter in Law, Lena, grew up and where her mother still lives. It is about 2 hours east of Dnipropetrovs'k while we are two hours west. Saw a lot of new country. Winter wheat harvest is almost complete and much of the land is already worked in preparation for reseeding in early Sept. Corn crop is elephant-eye high and even and sunflowers are everywhere (like canola in Sask in mid 90’s the year it (almost?) overtook wheat as the big dollar generator). Lena says wheat ran about 6t/ha (88 bu/ac) and as high as 8t/ha.

Lena and her mom have 27 hectares (includes her grandmothers share) of the old collective farm where her mom worked. They lease it out to a private farmer. Their crop share is 7 tonnes for the 27 ha but they pay no land taxes or crop expenses. Wheat was 1000 UAH ($230 CAD) in spring and is now 600 UAH ($138 CAD). They sold 3 t for cash and will store 4 t in their garage/storage shed. Grain is still pretty much flat stored except on the new more modern and better financed farms and for small quantities like Lena’s crop share, it is bagged.

Lena’s village used to have about 1500 people but there are fewer than 700 there now. Anyone who can leave has left. There are abandoned homes and apartments everywhere. It is well off the beaten track and far from both Dnipropetrovs'k and Donetsk so residential property has no value. At some point they may sell their farm land but for now it has not enough value to buy a home in the city so they will keep it.

We visited friends of Lena and Roman’s at another village. A young couple, with a couple of kids, struggling to make it work. He works for a private farm. A scooter provides transportation. They build a new house and converted the old house into sheds and stables. They have a couple of cows, some pigs, the usual chickens and geese and a big kitchen garden. Anyone longing for the good old days of small farms and "pure" food is likely welcome to change places with them.

An American Tale

A redneck farm hand radios back to his boss, the farm manager: 'Boss, I gotta big problem here. I hit a pig with the pickup. The pig's ok but he's stuck in the bull bar at the front of my pickup and is wriggling and squealing so much I can't get him out'.
The manager says, 'OK there's a Wichester behind the seat, take it out and shoot the pig in the head and you'll be able to remove him'.
Five minutes later the farm hand calls back. 'I did as you said, Boss. Took the rifle and shot the pig in the head and removed him from the bull-bars. No problem there, but I still can't go on.'
'Now what's the problem?' raged the manager..
'Well Boss, it's his motor bike. The flashing blue light is stuck under the right front wheel. You still there Boss?'

Lena

Lena is the partner of my Step-son Roman. She will be 30, two days before my birthday. She is enrolled in a Doctorate program in Agricultural Economics in one of the Institutes in Dnipropetrovsk. In Ukraine, doctoral graduate students are called Aspirants. She also works full time for the Institute and is still supposed to be meeting deadlines on her dissertation. Roman works when his health allows it but this summer he has been in hospital with pneumonia. Needless to say they have almost no money once the rent is paid.

Her mother still lives in the little farming village where Lena grew up. She is very ill with diabetes and finds it a struggle to walk or work, though she manages to look after 20+ geese all summer. They have a garden behind the now abandoned cottage where her grandmother used to live but it is three km from the apartment. The garden and the geese provide food for the three of them in the winter. In the summer Lena goes home many weekends (three hours on the bus) and all her holidays to plant, weed, harvest and preserve garden. In fall, she will kill and process the geese, canning them into three-litre jars.

The only handicap Lena doesn't have in her life right now is a child, though I think Tanya might have a comment about Roman at this point.

She and her mother are the last of the family as each was an only child. Lena's father abandoned them when she was young. Lena said to me one day, "I have no Papa. Will you be my Papa?" Needless to say, I now have (another) adopted daughter whom I love dearly. I can hardly wait for my kids to meet her.