Monday, July 28, 2008

Countrified Overgrowth


Food prices are going up, yes?

The bread here has gone from a 2006 price of $0.28 per loaf to $0.45 as of July 28, 2008 (statistics personally gathered by buying bread, eating it, not finishing it all before mold sets in, and then getting angry). This is too much.

No, seriously, people are getting antsy round these parts because of such everyday purchase price pressure. You should hear the locals start with cooking oil. They're already getting their old Soviet ration line boots ready just in case.

But there's a lovely solution to all of this worry with supermarket price gouging: grow your own food.

Many people in this region, mostly the Russians, have a long tradition of using the land for both sustenance and relaxation by maintaining a garden village, or 'Dacha'. They are second homes that may be lived in year round, though are normally occupied during the summer months. Thanks to the beautiful simplicity of the Russian language, a person that lives in a Dacha is called Dachnik.

Dachas have a long history in Russian culture, dating back to Peter the Great.


Our garden cottage

Extra land was given out to loyalists by the Tsar (Tzar? Czar? Theatre?) and in archaic Russian, dacha means 'something that is given.' Over time, fortunately, that whole government give-a-way went to the wayside, and people started up their own Dachas. These garden homes have some of the following fruits and vegetables: potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, gooseberries, snozberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, honeysuckle, grapes, carrots, cucumbers, onions, garlic, dill, radishes, parsley, rubarb and yougettheideaberries.

Snozberries located in bag.

Through the generosity of wanting to teach an ignorant, little American about this rich agricultural history, my organizational boss, Elena Bondareva, has so kindly volunteered me to work at her parents' Dacha every Sunday. Dacha work includes planting of potatoes, picking of sweet berries and vegetables, clearing of overgrowth, movement of heavy things, jimyrigging an irrigation system and moving piles of dirt and dung from point a to point b.

In complete sincerity, it is the best part of my week. I return home every Sunday with a bag of vegetables and fruits that I could not possibly finish on my own, and the rest is sold by the Grandma to street vendors around Pavlodar.


If you work hard, you get dirty. If you get dirty, you eat.

There is no talk of sustainability, project planning, strategic plans, English lessons or laptops. I simply move and remove things that have grown from the ground or trees for a few hours, sit down at the kitchen table and allow an old woman to force me to eat however much food I can take until she is satisfied enough with my tortured gluttony to openly tell me "good job". This usually occurs after a minimum of six boiled eggs, two bowls of soup (in the summer!), two glasses of homemade wine, two cups of tea, half a kielbasa, three potatoes, a tomato and half a loaf of bread. I am fully fortified by 2 o'clock every Sunday afternoon.

And that is the Dacha.


GARBAGE FIRES ARE BAD IDEAS


And Sunday the 27th came.


I'm coming towards the Dacha home to start up work for the day, trying to formulate an opportunity where I can insert my gardening word of the day, "Мотыги" (hoe), into a proper sentence. Walking along the path past a pile of garbage, I come up with, "So when am I going to have the happy opportunity to use the hoe?"

I pass a woman burning some grass and weeds outside her fence. When I reach my summer garden home, the rusted gate on the fence scratches obligingly, and I am a little embarrassed to see that everyone (Elena, her husband Papik, and Grandma) are eating lunch already.

"Why are you late?" scolds Grandma.

"I am late becaus--," I'm interrupted.

"I don't need to know. There is food to eat. Sit. Eat. It's for your health," says Grandma, more out of habit and force than stereotypical kindness. I sit. I eat.

The Photogenic Igor (Papik).

I suggest that after lunch, I could weed some of the overgrowth outside our fence in the pathway. Papik shoots it down.

"Why should you clear the pathway? That's not our territory," he states.

"But everyone uses it...weren't all you Communists about community and the collective before?" I ask with a smile.

"Ha! That garbage! Everybody's worries about their own things now, and we're the same," Papik answers,"We clear out our own area, and let the rest to whomever. Leave it."

We take a drag of homemade wine. Something outside, past the limits of our territory, catches Elena's attention.

"What's that smoke over there?" she asks to no one in particular.

Our investigation begins. There is a fire situated about 200 yards away from our Dacha, along one of the main walkways in our region, far enough to not pose any danger to us. Our conclusion is that a large garbage pile was lit on fire for disposal purposes and, like most plans involving fire, the whole damn area around it wants in on the hot, burning action. The fire begins eating up the dry brush surrounding it, spreading to the fencing around another Dacha. Thankfully, no one was at the Dacha. No one would burn.

The same could not be said for the outhouse next to the fence; that shit went up in flames.


The fire burned for nearly an hour.

Dancing reds were overtaking the indifferent gold of the ground and turning it all into black. The sky remained defiantly blue. It had rained, just a little bit, a few days earlier, but people don't grow potatoes in sponges--this grass and land was dry.

I suggested that we get some buckets of water from a pond nearby to cut the spread of the fire. That was shot down by Elena.

"A waste of time," she concluded.

A small coddling of people had gathered at this point, looking on and giving guesses as to how far the whole thing would spread. Their demeanor and dialogue came off like porch-dwelling elderly discussing and debating the potential of a dark cloud forming in the sky.

"Yip, that right there's a problem that'll get worse before it gets better," says one.
"Nah, 'taint gonna be nothing more than a little wind and a blow-by," the other argues.

Then they just waited around for something else to happen or burn.

A big red truck.

We had called the firemen roughly twenty minutes before they came to put out the blaze, the firemen being three guys in a red truck. They had a hose of sorts, and performed their job well, keeping the damage to some overgrowth, a fence, an outhouse, a little singeing of a Dacha nearby and that pile of garbage.

The crowd disperses, all turning towards their Dachas, and I to Elena with a question.

"So when am I going to have the happy opportunity to use the hoe?"


Spread it on.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

I really want that shirt Papik has on.

Anonymous said...

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Is this possible?