Машенька и три медведя

Mashenka (Maria, Masha)and the three bears is the Russian name for that old children's favourite Goldilocks and the three bears.  I am certain that the story originated in Russia, given their longstanding relationship with bears and the dishes of porridge or Kasha are certainly very Russian.

I had posted this video on Facebook a few weeks back.  It is the best laugh watching that poor struggling news anchor trying desperately to finish reading the item.  The visuals (imagined) just crack her up.





When MayB was little we had a version of The Three Bears, possibly a Little Golden Book, which I used to read to her. Good thing she was little or it could have really warped her.  I mean it had adult content.  I quote:

"Once upon a time there were three bears.  They lived in a house in the woods. Papa Bear pounded nails in the roof. Mama Bear watered the flowers in the yard. Baby Bear did tricks on the lawn".

I would carefully explain to MayB that I did not know who Trix was and since she was never mentioned again in the book, she was obviously just a passing fancy.  But I mean, can you imagine exposing little children to that sort of thing?  Terrible.

Better. Home and Garden.

Hot.  +30 every day.  No rain for at least 6 weeks.  Tanya is up early to water flower gardens and the kitchen garden.  The whole town must be watering tonight as there is no pressure.  Since the auxiliary pump blew up and flooded the passage way to the outbuilding, we have not got it hooked back up to augment the water pressure.

The flowers are doing well as they get the most care.  The peonies are done though elsewhere in town there are still some blooming.  The roses are going full blast.  There is one white rose bush that the flowers are huge but die off quickly.  We found under each flower a shiny blue-green-black bug about the size of a half-dime.  New to us. Rose pictures tomorrow.

Tanya has been digging up and cleaning off bulbs from certain lilies, tulips, crocuses and hyacinths.  They will be stored for the summer and replanted this fall.  There are boxes full of them, all neat, clean and labelled.  When we were in Kyiv, she found a number of bulbs of colours or varieties she didn't have  so came home with a few dozen more.

The red climbing roses on the left will get their own support structure next year which will allow them to gow up and over the sidewalk along the outbuilding.  They will eventually look like Lucia's roses next door (inset).

The front garden, with all sorts of flowers - several types of lilies, a beautiful blue Clematus  that is growing great guns and several of these white bells.  There is only one plant with blue bells.  Tanya had anticipated alternating white and blue but it didn't turn out that way.

We have a hammock strung between two huge apple trees.  It needs tightening I think as it sags something fierce when Tanya gets into it.  I am not even going to try.  Masha likes it. she is off school since June 1 and  comes to see us every few days.

This is along side our kitchen garden.  three sour cherries that I planted there two years ago - they were volunteer just outside our fence; and an apricot tree.  All look like they will have some fruit this year. The black strip is to keep the weeds from the vacant lot from polluting our garden.

Our kitchen garden from the back looking towards our yard.  the empty looking area is all vines - cucs, watermelon etc.  Then beans, peas, onions, early cucs.

The other half of the garden.  The tomato patch is closest to the fence.  200 plants but only 12" - 18" between them.  they do not grow and produce like I am used to even in dry old Saskatchewan.  Tanya waters them every two days.

Agro 2011 - Some Booth Babes for the Boys

No exhibition is complete without booth babes, apparently.  Khortytsya Horilka (in Ukrainian, Vodka in Russian) is one of the better brands in Ukraine. These young women were working the Khortytsya brand, preparing some traditional dish for free lunch giveaway.  I think it was buckwheat kasha (porridge) which is eaten here like we eat potatoes or rice in North America.  They did not look particularly happy, either with their work or with themselves, I am not sure which.  Maybe both.

They knew why they were there and why they were dressed the way they were.  Not much to be proud of but sex sells alcohol.  (And alcohol sells sex - "Krombacher beer - helping ugly people get laid since 1516").

Funny but if those same girls wearing equally revealing clothes of their own choosing (likely less mid-rift and more cleavage though) were walking down Khreshchatik with their friends or boyfriends, they would be happy and confident.  And they would look a lot sexier than they did "selling" vodka.

Agro 2011 - Food and Drink Dispays

There were more than a dozen Oblasts (provinces) with very elaborate booths at the show, displaying all the different brands of food and beverages produced there.  Not sure what purpose it served other that bragging rights.  It was not a consumer show so it wouldn't increase market share or anything.  But the displays were impressive.  There are hundreds of brands of sausage and cheese in Ukraine and dozens of brands of beer and vodka.  This is a carry over from Soviet times when every little town had a processing plant.  Even now anyone with cows or pigs wants to build a processing plant and run a store to sell direct..

When Tanya was managing the government procurement contracts between the collective farms and the processors in P'yatikhatski Raion in the last years of the USSR and the first few years of independence, there were 28 collective farms, four bread factories, four milk factories and three meat factories (they were called factories).

Agro 2011 - Seeding and tillage

As RB pointed out, it is easy to take teh boy from the farm but hard to take the farm from the boy.  I know I have a few rural or rural at heart readers so these pictures are for them.  Just a few more pictures folks and then on with the show. The next two Agro-2011 will be more interesting.  Promise.

The tillage equipment was mostly disks and cultivators.  Only one plow that I saw. I hate plows, having seen what they do to the soil.  Don't like disks much either.  Same reason.  Turns the trash under instead of leaving it on top to hold moisture and control weeds.  Seeding equipment ranged from the ancient to the ultra modern.  There was an end-wheel press drill that was much like the ones used on state and collective farms for decades.  And modern air seeders with complex multi openers and all sorts of electronic controls and monitors.

My grandfather used a similar model with steel wheels in the 1920's.

Crop duster. 

Corn planter for the small farmer

Agro 2011 - Combines and Tractors

I am always happy when Ukraine does things for itself, instead of importing.  Like make farm machinery.  (Now all my Saskatchewan buddies will be mad.  Sask, and Canada, exports a pile of machinery to Ukraine every year).  There were all kinds of Ukraine mfrd combines this year, along with the usual John Deere, New Holland and Caterpillar.  Combines made in Bila Tserkva, Kherson, Slavutych and Kharkiv, along with other made in Russia and Belarus.  Krasnoyarsk combines are now made in Ukraine at Bila Tserkva.  Not sure if there are other Russian brands built here or if they are local brands.

Lots of tractors too, built in Ukraine, along with Russian and the well known Belarus tractors.  Many small makes from China along with lots of equipment for small farms.  Nice to see stuff that is for the little guys too.

Agro 2011 - Livestock

Twelve years ago there were several hundred cattle and other livestock on display at the show.  There was no judging per se.  The cattle were there to advertise the various (at that time government-owned) genetics farms and AI centres.  Almost all of them have been privatized one way or another. 

The Main Selection Centre of Ukraine at Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky was once flagship of the Ukraine SSR Genetics Farms and AI Centres.  Under  Director (the late) Irina Volenko the farm had several hundred beef cattle of five breeds and one of the best Holstein breeding herds. At one time they had a bull-stud in partnership with Semex Canada.  (You would love to hear the Semex version of events, I am sure) MSCU sold semen all over Ukraine; ran dairy and beef production schools, AI schools, ET schools, kept dairy and beef bull production records for Ukraine.  I was there so often from 1997 to 2005 that the professional staff were like family. 

MSCU was one of three Ukrainian partners in the 1999-2002 Beef Forage Development Project funded by CIDA, implemented by Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership (STEP).  My Tanya was a student in the first three week beef and forage school we taught at MSCU.

MSCU is still government owned but does virtually nothing.  It exists in name only.  The beef cattle are all gone.  the dairy cattle sold and the facilities leased.  All my friends are gone to new jobs.  Irina's daughter Svitlana started a genetics company and imports dairy semen from an American company.  She employs several of my friends.  My friend Volodya started his own genetics company and imports dairy and beef semen from another American company.  Both are doing well. Both companies had booths at the show.

There were maybe six farms with beef cattle at the show, to promote themselves.  There really is no market for beef bulls in the sense we would understand in North America.  There are only about 50,000 beef cattle in Ukraine and most of those are on (highly subsidized) purebred farms.

Charolais Bull (or Polissia breed; don't ask)

Sign promoting one farm's cattle

Limousin bull from France

Young Limousin bulls

Charolais bulls