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Homestead.org in the Former Soviet Union continued, page 6

At this point in our trek, Tolya got tired of me photographing the train and the bee trailer and all those other things and insisted that I photograph him.

Tolya and Tanya showed us around the place where they had almost anything you might expect to see growing including quite a few late-planted tomatoes and sweet peppers that I thought would probably be frosted before they were ripe.  I suggested this to Tanya and she shrugged off the work they represented saying that they might get frosted, but then again, they might not.  Even though the garden was no show-place, very weedy, you could see that it represented quite a bit of work; probably every Saturday per week since early spring. 

One of the the things that caught my eye was a crude greenhouse constructed of plastic sheeting over a wooden frame.  It was in terrible shape, now at the end of the season, but still had some of the best looking plants and vegetables on the place inside.

There was also a small pond that their son-in-law had dug by hand.  This gave me the opportunity to see that the soil here was sort of a light gray and didn’t look like much, but it was just a bit sandy and so soft that I could dig it up with my bare hands.  I understood why O. had been so discouraged over the black bottomland back home - what I considered our very best - because while ours had what I considered to be only a few rocks, here there wasn’t a rock within miles of this place, and the soft soil went all the way down to the water table.

While I was wandering around gawking at everything, Tanya had been peeling potatoes.  There were a few bricks stacked up to for a fireplace and she built a fire and started a pot of water boiling for the potatoes. 

Even though the whole place looked quite modest, I kept reminding myself that everything there, with the exception of most of the lumber that made up the dom, had either been found in the forest nearby (fence posts and firewood) or carried from Gomel on the train including bricks, greenhouse materials, tools and quite a bit of rebar (Tolya works in construction) which was used for everything from tomato stakes to a welded, heavy-duty doormat in front of the doma.

As soon as the potatoes were boiled, Tanya took the metal stove-top off of the fireplace and stirred the coals.  Then she produced a small plastic tub which was full of pork cut into fist-sized chunks and marinated in some liquid.  These were put on long steel spears that Tolya had brought from home along with onions and tomatoes to form shish-kabobs or what the Russians call “Shashlick”.

I suppose by now that you expect me to say that the finished product served in the open air under the grape arbor on a perfect Belarusian day was far better than I’d ever imagined it would be. 

I really hate to sound so clichéd, but it was, everything really was just wonderful and I was having a wonderful time already when Tolya produced a bottle of off-colored liquid which I correctly assumed was some of his home-made vodka and another of “malina vino” or raspberry wine, and we had that with the meal.                                                          

Tolya is always trying to get me drunk, which is sort of funny since I probably outweigh him by thirty or forty pounds, tend to stick to wine and, as I mentioned am quite adept at faking sobriety.  He, on the other hand brought the vodka for himself and usually gets roaring drunk in a remarkably short time.  This time was a little different though.  After the meal, I took the glass of wine that he kept refilling for me and moved over to lean against the dom wall, there to enjoy my full stomach and the warm sun.

 Olia brought over a blanket and lay down on it and I joined her there.

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