Ready for school to start... almost

Working on installing the water line- that's Nikoli, with a hair cut

 Garry and I are going to drive toward Odessa later today, we are going south of there to pick up one of the orphans that will be attending the school this year.

 Most of the other students are already in the village, they have been undergoing preliminary health tests at the hospital, some have been here for a few weeks and have been getting paid to work on the barn renovation or other farm work, like haying.

 Two of the guys who had been living on the streets moved in the house with Garry while I was gone, because of concerns that one had previously had TB, but his tests were negative and they should be moving in the boys house with the rest shortly.

Masha has been busy, co-coordinating the students going through the interviews and going to the hospital with them, along with serving as liaison for the attempt to purchase and import equipment. She is who the students phone when they need to talk.

The metal structure for the milking parlor is being galvanized and will be ready to install soon. Then the milking equipment that was purchased used in Canada will be installed.

Garry looking at his boxes of parlor that were shipped from Canada

Garry flushed a toilet to show me it works

The brisket boards have been installed onto the freestalls

There is bad news about the electricity however. Last week Victor found out that there is no way to get it finished this fall. The shortcut methods to get all the  procedures required is unavailable now, there are no guys doing it, so everything will need to be done by the officials, it will probably be spring before the barn is hooked up to the grid.

This means even if everything is installed this month, they will have to keep milking the cows in the current barn until there is power. Since we bought those heifers a couple months ago, there will be almost twice as many cows as stalls this winter, so they will have to be switched around during milkings, with some staying in the pens where the heifers used to be. All the young stock will have to live in the new barn, instead of the other way as planned.

 We won't be able to use the new barn classroom as planned, so we have decided to retrofit the summer kitchen here as the classroom for this winter. Luckily that won't take long, we do need to get the new gas furnace installed before it gets cold. There have been tanks put into the ground to hold drinking water for the fostor homes, so they can used well water for washing, to save money.

School will start on September 8, 2014. watch for photos.