Getting ready for the big bad winter

As I’m writing this it’s currently about 60 degrees outside and has been comfortably around that number for over a week. Yippee! Nevertheless, we’re gearing up for a ferocious winter. Ferocious because we’ve never endured a winter in Kazakhstan and we expect it to be bad. Really bad. I mean, we’re about an hour away from Siberia!

A cozy hibernation requires lots of wood and coal. Our neighbors, the Salzberg brothers, are in the business of woodcutting. When Nathan finally caught them on a sober day they loaded up their big truck with logs and rumbled over to our side-gate and unloaded all of this . . .

There are two empty sheds near this pile so we decided to use one of them for wood storage. But first Mr. Jones has to chop all those logs up so that they’ll fit into our stove and he’s sure been busy with that axe! I have to say, I love watching him engaged in all this manual labor about as much as I like the vision of him pouring over books in a library. My new macho man has since decided we need another truck load of wood (he’s broken 2 axes already – Desi calls them ‘oxes’) but truly we really don’t know what we’re doing and expect to burn through a lot of wood. We’d like to feel we can liberally do so without fear of running out in the middle of a deep January freeze and then needing to chop another truck load and perhaps get frost bitten in the process . . . you get the idea.

It took a few more days, but Valya finally busted into our kitchen one morning and said it was time to go get the coal. An hour later Nate arrived with a driver and 7 tons of coal. They dumped it in one big black dusty heap and now hard-worker-Jones gets to shovel it all, bit by bit, into the other empty shed. It’s taking a long time.

Meanwhile after each session he comes in coated with coal dust. This is a big change for a guy who’s used to city life with thebabes and moonlighting libraries and classrooms! He has the marks to show it too. Our first lighting up of the stove was very exciting – Valya did the honors while we watched and took notes. It’s going to take some practice to get it as hot as he did. I may have the hydraulics a little skewed, but the way I see it is the heat rises to the attic where there is a tank of water which is heated and pumped via external pipes and radiators throughout the house. It works! I love that I can hang wet laundry on the pipes in the winter and have them dry there. All of our winter things and other miscellany arrived from Russia last month. We are not going back for that last hoped for month. We did end up getting our Russian visas (for 1month) but we are out of time.

Nathan Jones also fixed the old fashioned washing machine in the banya. One side is a spinner, which I was always able to use, but the other side it turned out only needed a little squirt of oil and now it’s rotating like new (it’s maybe a 50year old machine). I’m happy to have things simplified a little – though I still have to remove the clothes, ringing each of them in the process, and then rinse them manually and give them each another cursory ring, then place them in the spinner for a real professional job. They dry more quickly this way, of course. All this still takes about 3hours, non-stop action, but the weather’s been great and I’m still getting my kicks out of it. It’s nice to be so easily pleased.

Also, we decided to buy a used bike at the local rynick. It’s been a bit of a trial and we’re regretting it. My very first go at riding a bike again took me by surprise – it’s hard!! And it wasn't long before I fell and skinned my knee – tearing one of my 4 pairs of pants. Ugh! The fall messed up the right peddle too. And then the tires went flat. Nate was able to replace the peddle after a series of frustrating attempts and then the pump I bought turned out to be a real ‘light-weight” not doing the job properly. We borrowed Valya’s pump but after a week it went flat again! And again! I bought the bike to make life easier, I must say.

Lament over. Here are a few more pictures:

It’s BLAZIN’!!

A nice box of freshly chopped wood.

This is my borst cooking on the wood burning stove – love it!

Desmond P. Jones has his first chore: gathering kindling for the fire

I’m a hard working guy.

Zoe and I taking a moment to cuddle and kiss.