New floors for Auxana

Auxana is so happy with her new floors, thank you everyone and thank you Sergey for getting it done so quickly.

Tonight at supper, the boys did not really understand making beretos ... I think the solution is to add one more shell and call it a sandwich.

 They work d hard for it thought .. lots of coal delivered

 We also started drying tea .

 The corn arrived today as well

 The outdoor kitchen is full of everything to make some great kimchee

 We clipped and roooted some of the morning glories to move them into the green house fo the winter.

 Marat was applying the rooting compound and planting

 Yesterday we had a really nice meal and visit with Jenish and Azamats family..

We have a family staying on the farm that came up horseback riding then helped us in the garden picking a pile of tomatoes and cabbage. .. but first they enjoyed some hotdogs on th fire.

Tomorrow we will start pruning and training the apple trees .

Winter is almost here.

Here is a current need . Many of you know Auxana that we have been helping. 

Her home is a small mud block house that had dirt floors until a few years ago . We were able to pour cement floors to keep dry,  Now we would like to put some insulation and plywood down covered with vinyl .  

We are looking for about $200.  we could start with just the wood and finish later with a donation of $100 if anyone would like to help with this.   

This week we were in Bishkek for me to get some teeth out. After we went out for lunch with Bekah , Azamat, Kamalla and Nick .. I thought it was funny that Julies hamburger was served with black surgical gloves.

It has started to get cold here and the heat is not on yet , so I have had to improvise a little to keep warm.

Its nice and warm in the green house though .  We have been restarting new tomatoes from clippings from the garden.

Out in the garden we have plowed and planted spinach .  We have been researching about winter crops of spinach that will come up first thing in the spring ,  They will become weather resistant and get a head start on the weeds in the spring , It will also give us 2 months of growing in the spring wet season before the hot dry summer hits.

We have started harvesting the sweet potatoes.  They did well, and we have snipped the tops and started rooting them to re plant in the green house for a spring harvest.

Fun at the Kashar

A beautiful day for a picnic.  Today at the activity centre we have about 30 guests , many from a local orphanage.  

Horse back riding, crafts, Rock painting, games,  nail painting and hot dogs on the fire . 

First day back to the farm

It was a long over due trip to the farm, but we finally made it.   We walked around the farm a bit kind of like a homing pigeon circling as it gets its bearings. 

I was impressed with the job that Vlady did on the out door kitchen .  He out did himself with some great mettle work.  It looks great.                                                       Over at the green house I was pleased to see how good the sweet potatoes did .  This batch we were growing was for the tops that we will be using to plant a large patch in the garden next spring .. but it was nice to see that they grew, and   

they taste great ,   the plants in this photo was from one branch that we had planted in a grain sack.  The interesting thing is that a sweet potato is not actually a potato , it is the tuber on the route of a morning glory plant.  They do not flower as much as a common version of morning glory plant though.  We did grow the flowering morning glories as well over in Julies rock garden.  I am kind of curious what I will find in the fall when I dig up one of these .

It was grate  to see everyone again , apart from a few of the kids that are in school .  We had a nice lunch before we headed back home to work on the schedule and planes for the team that will be arriving on Sunday afternoon.  

Givetober begins and seniors day report

It is that time of year again, the snow is a little lower on the mountains every day.  Typically between the farm and families we help out we give out between 50 and 100 tons of coal and 8 to 10 tons of fire wood for starting fires.  We also set up depots around the valley where we can give out coal from in emergency cases through out the winter.  The last couple years we have had great support from a small church in Norwood Ontario . They have a program called Givetober.  The church identifies areas that they want to support and for the month they raise funds to help out.  It is our hope to cover about 50% of our coal expenses from this one campaign.  If you would like to help us as well, I am sure that many families would be very appreciative.   Below is a video that was played in church this morning to shine some light onto this need. 

I know that I am supposed to take it easy,  so I will do my best. fortunately we have some good strong hard working boys on the farm as well as a team coming from Nashville.  We will land in Kyrgyzstan on the 9th, by that time the 50 tons of coal we have spoken for will start to arrive.  

Olga was hard at it for Seniors day this year.  She told me that they were all so happy and blessed that she came that many of them just started to cry.  It was such a blessing for them .  Thank you to everyone that had a party in this.    Below are just a few of the pictures from the day.