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Homestead.org in the Former Soviet Union continued, page 4

"...More than 95% of these suburban homes had their back yards planted virtually fence-to-fence with vegetables, fruit trees and flowers." 

The Homestead.org forum has lately been discussing the growing oil crisis in America and, like homestead forums for the last thirty years or so, what would happen if our oil-based economy were to break down. 

Here you can see one of the more optimistic possibilities, because more than 95% of these suburban homes had their back yards planted virtually fence-to-fence with vegetables, fruit trees and flowers.  I’m sure people like Tolya would think it was pure madness to see what Americans pay for a plot of land only to raise grass which they then spend every other weekend mowing down.  Even in the main city park here, they let the grass get to eight or nine inches tall before they mow it.

I don’t know exactly how far we took the train out of the city, but the ride took about an hour.  Compared to the trolley-bus, the train is clean and comfortable with no frills and no advertising – also no graffiti.  A one-way ticket cost about 60 cents and we might have gone as much as fifty miles, although I’m guessing it was about thirty since we made maybe a half-dozen stops.  This compares favorably with what it costs to put your toddler on a toy train at an amusement park in the states, although there are fewer fringe benefits, as one is not permitted to ring the bell.

You see a different crowd of people on the trains here than you do in the cities.  Fewer women dressed to make your heart stop beating and more less-shapely and older figures dressed as you’d expect peasants to dress.  When we came to our stop, I noticed several of them were carrying things like small bundles of lumber or live plants. 

Our stop apparently serviced a village located about a mile across the open plain which you could see from the depot, a small concrete building and long platform, otherwise it was out in the middle of no-where.

The area alongside the tracks was lined with trees, but the walk to our final destination was all open field on nearly level terrain; similar to the very gentle roll of the land you find in Iowa.  Most of Belarus, or at least the parts I’ve been through, is basically marshy country that is, I think, probably more similar in vegetation and climate to Minnesota. 

The low-lying areas have scattered deep, straight ditches dug in them about eight feet deep and twelve feet wide.  I thought that they might be for irrigation and I was told that while there were times when they might be used that way, the main purpose was just the opposite, drainage.  Along the way, we saw a man fishing in one of them, so I guess they’ve been there for a while and don’t ever dry up.

The walk back to the dacha was just shy of two miles and it made me think of all the old stories from the Canterbury Tales to Simple Simon, about people trekking through the countryside and the oddities that they encounter.  If you go walking in the country around my house in the Ozarks, you just walk through the woods, or if you’re on the county road, past houses with cars parked in front and usually no people to be seen, but here in the space of two miles we came upon several curious people and things.

The first thing we passed after the fisherman was a small herd of Holstein cows standing out in the middle of a part of the field where the hay had very recently been baled into big round bales, identical to the hay-baling technology back home.  These cattle were free to wander where they wanted, subject only to the control of a very old woman sitting in the grass watching them.  Olia explained to me that the cattle belonged to the residents of the village, and it was apparently this old woman’s turn to spend the day watching them.  The path or trail ran right through the middle of the herd, and as we came through sometimes within a yard or two of certain cows, they didn’t even bother to turn away.  Even for dairy cows they seemed unusually tame.

We crossed a concrete bridge over one of the drainage ditches and Tanya mentioned having a phobia about water, which prompted Olia to say that everyone has their own special fears mentioning hers of caterpillars, then she told them that I was so afraid of heights that I couldn’t look down when crossing the foot-bridge at the Gomel park (about a 100-foot drop, or maybe it’s only half that).   Tolya thought this was unspeakably funny and laughed out loud both louder and longer than I thought was absolutely necessary.

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