Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

"Contrary to the impositions of the whiz-bang-blinded and the gadget-addled
among us, living off the land is not about projects, or systems, or
organizations, but about shovels and buckets and hoes, and it is not even
so much about skills or techniques, as it is about habits."


Our Village by Dmitry Orlov
http://survivingpeakoil.com/?p=40#more-40
Posted on December 1, 2007


A few years after the Soviet Union collapsed, I spent some time living in a
small Russian village where my wife’s side of the family owns a house.
There is nothing special or unique about this particular village; I am sure
that it is just one of thousands like it, scattered over the vast expanse
of Russia. It is a simple place that caters to simple needs. Like many such
places, it was only very slightly affected by the collapse of the Soviet
economy: you’d have to know what to look for to detect changes, and none
of them made obvious the fact that elsewhere life had changed in dramatic
ways.

The United States is now facing a predicament similar to the one the Soviet
Union confronted some two decades ago. There is a great deal of discussion,
among those few who try to think for themselves, about the right way to
respond to the permanent energy crisis that has already started to grip the
country. The entire American way of life is an artificial life support
system that runs on fossil fuels, and it is going to get knocked out as
these fuels run low. Of the few people who have any notion that this is
happening, even fewer can imagine what might come next, beyond the gut
feeling that it will be unpleasant.

Some people have started to entertain thoughts of returning to a rural way
of life and surviving through subsistence agriculture - like the people in
our village. This is, of course, an excellent idea. If meadow voles could
talk, they would categorically deny that their lifestyle and diet are in
any way affected by fossil fuel prices and shortages, stock market crashes,
cities looted by armed mobs, internment camps run by federal emergency
goons, or what have you. But we are not meadow voles, and when we decide to
start living off the land, as with any new endeavor, it is important for us
to learn as much as we can, and to think things through. However, given the
subject matter at hand, to be of any use, such learning and thinking must
be sufficiently concrete, simple, and down-to-earth.

There is an element to American culture that never ceases to amuse me. Even
when grappling with the idea of economic disintegration, Americans attempt
to cast it in terms of technological or economic progress: eco-villages,
sustainable development, energy efficiency and so on. Under the
circumstances, such compulsive techno-optimism seems maladaptive. I love
the new advances in organic farming, which I find fascinating and very
useful, but why do people seem incapable of doing the simplest things
without making them into projects, preferably ones that involve some
element of new technology? Thousands of years of happy composting using
heaps and pits are behind us: now we need bins - and plastic, oil-based
ones at that!

Contrary to the impositions of the whiz-bang-blinded and the gadget-addled
among us, living off the land is not about projects, or systems, or
organizations, but about shovels and buckets and hoes, and it is not even
so much about skills or techniques, as it is about habits. Yes, you too can
pick up the healthy habits of growing and gathering your own food, storing
it, cooking it, eating it, excreting it, and, yes, even composting the end
result. The temporary bounty of fossil fuels has allowed a lot of the
former peasants to live like nobles for a time - residing in mansions,
moving about in carriages, and having people serve them. Once these sources
of energy are depleted, many of these former peasants will be forced to
revert back. They will once more have to live in huts, travel on foot,
wield their ancestral scythes and sickles to provide their sustenance, and
do their own chores.

But we are people, not voles, and mere subsistence is not enough. Village
life is about growing food, but it is also about much more. It is about the
sense of security that comes from knowing what you need and how to help
yourself to it. And it is about the profound experience of beauty that only
comes from direct, daily contact with nature. Finally, it is about the
sense of eternity, of the timelessness that comes from knowing that nothing
ever has to change unless you want it to: great empires may rise up and
crumble all around you, but the village will abide.

A Home in the Village

When Natasha, my wife, was a teen-ager growing up in the sunset glow of the
Soviet Union, her mother, grandmother, and aunt bought a house in a small
Russian village. At that time this was an unusual thing to do, and
something of an experiment. While many St. Petersburg residents owned
vacation homes, hardly any of these were in small, remote, working
villages. More recently, there has been a virtual stampede of middle-class
people from St. Petersburg and Moscow rushing to buy houses in villages.
Formerly, however, such people preferred to spend their summers in resort
communities, which offered possibilities for recreation. Natasha’s family
was the only city family, and the only family not descended from people in
the vicinity, among the population of the village.

>From that time, Natasha spent at least a part of each summer living, and
doing her share of the chores, in this village. She would have much
preferred to stay in the city with her friends, and spent time there only
because her family insisted. After we met, I spent quite a bit of time
there myself, and found the place much more to my liking than she ever did.
This is hardly surprising, because I happen to like villages. From when I
was five, my family spent at least a month, in the middle of the summer,
living in various villages, in different parts of Russia, the Baltic
states, and the Ukraine. Each of these villages remains in my memory like
an uncut gem surrounded by the gray gravel of city life.

It is notable that the men of the family had little or no say in the
decision to purchase this house. Natasha’s mother, grandmother, and aunt
formed a sort of matriarchal triumvirate, which ruled the family nest,
generally not bothering to solicit the agreement of her father,
grandfather, or uncle in making decisions. With the exception of her
grandfather, who was elderly and did not mind spending the summers in the
calm atmosphere of the village, none of them spent much time there, and
gratefully helped gather, transport and eat the tasty food that grew there.
This approach seems to have worked very well for all of them. Clearly, it
is more important to keep men fed than to listen to their opinions,
regardless of their wisdom and originality.

The Village, Soykino

Our village is called Soykino and is located right on the border between
the Novgorod and Pskov regions. It consists of eight houses lined up in
rows along the main highway connecting the two regional capitals: six
houses on one side, two on the other. Two of the six houses stand vacant,
and are used for storage. The village is about five hours’ drive from St.
Petersburg, or a day’s journey by train. It is within a half an hour’s
walk from a somewhat larger village, Sitnya, which has a general store, a
dairy farm, a bus stop, and a post office. Sitnya is about an hour by bus
from an even larger local town, Soltsy, which prospered during the middle
ages due to its proximity to some salt seeps, which were used to produce
salt. Soltsy has several tree-lined avenues, several stores, a school, a
hospital, a train station, and a bus depot.

The houses in Soykino are surrounded by a few hectares of farmland, which
is used for potato fields, kitchen gardens, orchards, and hay fields. The
houses are log cabins, one log wide, two logs long, the narrow end facing
the road. Most of them are covered on the outside with clapboards, which
are invariably painted a fast-fading cheery yellow. Our family was the
first in the village to clapboard and paint their house, and others
followed, copying us down to the exact color. All houses are supplied with
enough electricity to power a few light bulbs, a refrigerator, a radio, and
a television set. Telephone calls can sometimes be made from the post
office in Sitnya, which is open a few hours on most workdays, but more
often than not the telephone line is down.

Heat is provided either by the traditional Russian stove, which takes up
half a room, has a warm bed at the top, and only needs to be fired twice a
day, or a tiled Dutch stove that only takes up a corner of the room. Some
villagers use propane stoves for cooking, while others have cooking stoves
stoked with firewood. None of the houses has any sort of plumbing. Each
house is adjoined by a storage shed and a cozy outhouse. All outhouses
except ours are positioned over septic pits; while ours is a
technologically advanced composting toilet, which consists of a bench with
a hole positioned over a bucket that is periodically dumped onto the
compost heap, and which makes its humble contribution to the bounty of our
kitchen garden. Some houses also have pole tents with hearths, which are
used for cooking and eating during the summer months.

Many of the houses are surrounded by picket fences. The fence that runs
along the road is generally seen as a requirement, and has a latching gate.
The fences between houses are optional; contrary to the erroneous English
saying, good neighbors make for optional fences. The back fence is often
missing.

The houses lack driveways, and are reachable from the road via planks
thrown over the drainage ditch that runs along the road. There is one
car-worthy log bridge, which serves as the driveway for the entire village,
but since only a couple of the residents own cars, it is rarely used.

The houses are surrounded by kitchen gardens and orchards. Beyond the
houses lie hay and potato fields, and beyond those, the river Sitnya, a
tributary of Shelon, which, via lake Ilmen, river Volkhov, lake Ladoga,
river Neva, and the Gulf of Finland, eventually drains into the Baltic Sea.

The People of Soykino

The permanent population of Soykino, numbering just over a dozen, consists
mainly of middle-aged or elderly people, who are often visited by their
children and grandchildren. Some of them work in the neighboring Sitnya,
which, with a larger population and a dairy farm, offers some possibilities
for employment.

Soykino has just one family that could be called a proper farming family,
the Mukhins. This because they actually produce a cash crop of sorts:
fodder, which, however, they keep for their own horse and sheep. Father,
mother, and three daughters harvest hay in the surrounding fields with the
help of their family horse and a hay-wagon, scythes, rakes, and pitchforks.
Along with everyone else, they also tend their potato field and kitchen
garden, and pick mushrooms and berries in the surrounding forests. It is
common knowledge that the hay fields around the village are for their use,
although it is unclear whether this arrangement has any official sanction.
More likely, these fields, separated from the road by a ditch and a row of
houses, are effectively out of reach of the communal farm. The other
villagers approve of the Mukhins because they like fertilizing their
cucumber patches with manure from their horse, which is considered a
precious commodity.

The residents of neighboring Sitnya rarely venture out to Soykino, although
lately the links have started to expand to encompass firewood delivery, cow
manure delivery, and plowing services. There is an additional contingent of
itinerant laborers, alcoholics, and thieves, and their various
permutations. These pay sporadic visits to Soykino, and have to be
negotiated with in order to have one’s firewood sawed and split and
one’s property left unmolested.

Of the population of Sitnya, the most visible are a few youths who buzz by
several times a day on ancient two-stroke motorcycles. These are the dregs
of the local youth. Most everyone their age tries very hard to escape at
least as far as Soltsy, where there are some jobs. Others are drafted into
the army, never to return. The ones that remain do so because they are
unfit for military service.

It was not easy for us to gain acceptance into Soykino society. After
several years of concerted effort at making contact with the locals, they
at last started to acknowledge our existence, saying hello, then bartering
food and favors, and finally even coming over for visits. This was
universally considered a great victory, because a great social divide had
been breached. Everyone who lived there had lived there for generations,
and was suspicious of newcomers. The flip side of this acceptance was a
certain lack of privacy: the typical village way to invite yourself over
for tea is to show up and yell “Hey, are you there?” across the fence.
But such visits are, of course, essential for keeping up on current events
and for making arrangements.

Agriculture in Soykino

The main purpose village life for everyone there, our family included, is
to survive, regardless of economic conditions, by using the few short
summer months to grow and gather enough food to last the entire winter.
Although in better times it is possible to survive in Russia by working a
job or two, and paying cash for food in stores and at farmers’ markets,
during leaner years one’s cash may not amount to much at all. Overall,
most people would agree that the economy is not to be relied on
exclusively, and so most people, city folk included, try to grow and gather
at least some food themselves. Should the economy evaporate completely, as
it has repeatedly threatened to do, they will at least have enough to
survive the winter.

The staple is made up of potatoes, which do not grow well in the thin,
sandy soil around Soykino. Without fertilizer, the potato harvest can
amount to less than the potatoes that were planted the spring. Fertilizer
can be had for free by picking up after the herd of cows from the communal
farm which wanders past the village twice a day, but this is considered
hard work. Most people try to arrange to have manure delivered to them by
people from the dairy farm.

Second in importance only to the potato fields are the kitchen gardens,
which generally take up all available territory around each house.
Cucumbers, eggplant, and squash are commonly grown, along with some green
manures. Tomatoes are grown as well, but require hothouses in order to
ripen. A typical village hothouse is a rickety affair made up of
polyethylene sheets stretched over poles and weighted down with logs. Some
of the houses also have a few apple and plum trees, as well as raspberry
and currant bushes. Since the soil is thin, a concerted effort is made to
marshal organic wastes, and most plots sport large compost heaps, overgrown
with burdocks, which can be used in lieu of toilet paper.

Since most houses lack either wells or pumped water, irrigation is provided
for by collecting rainwater from the roofs of houses and sheds. The gutters
run into barrels or old bathtubs, from which watering cans are filled. This
makes watering the kitchen garden a bit more labor-intensive than spraying
water from a hose, but nowhere near as bad as fetching water in buckets
from the river.

Except for the one horse and a few sheep, the village is without livestock.
Milk can be had very cheaply from the herd at the dairy farm, a half-hour
walk each way, and is used to make sour cream, yogurt, cottage cheese, and
butter. Several villagers raise chickens, which are prized as much for
their wild colors as their egg-laying ability, with the normal, white
chickens definitely outnumbered by the black, red, and brown hens and
roosters. Eggs are considered a good present to take along when going to
visit neighbors. Some villagers also raise rabbits, which are the only
source of meat, used in rabbit stew. The villagers seem to lack respect for
rabbit meat, and are shy about referring to it as such, preferring to
simply call it “meat”.

The Ecosystem

Almost everyone in Soykino gathers mushrooms and berries in the forest. Of
the mushrooms, the prized ones are Boletes and Chanterelles, but many of
the bitter, semi-edible mushrooms are used as well, soaked and then
pickled. The mushrooms are dried and used in soups and stews throughout the
winter.

Of the berries, raspberries are made into preserves, while blueberries and
blackberries are eaten fresh and baked into pies. In early summer some wild
strawberries can be found, in small quantities, but quantity is hardly an
issue when it comes to these, given their amazing aroma and flavor. Later
in the season, there are plenty of cranberries as well.

The land around Soykino consists of large rectangular plots of mixed forest
and meadow cross-hatched with drainage ditches. Much of the surrounding
land was in the past swampy, and a great effort had been made to drain it.
Out in the forest, there are some abandoned homesteads, where fruit trees
and currant bushes often continue to thrive untended, and locals who know
such places sometimes come back with baskets full of fruit.

The name “Soykino” is derived from “soyka” (the Russian word for
“jay”) and there are indeed plenty of jays to be found there. There is
also a family of storks, whose nest used to majestically adorn the top of
the tallest pine tree in the center of the village, but who have recently
relocated to the cemetery some distance down the road. They can still be
seen leaping about in the fields, catching frogs, then airlifting them up
to the nest. There is also the usual rowdy family of crows, and a
particularly infuriating, thieving clan of magpies, who have developed a
taste for soap, and instantly swoop down and steal any bar of soap that is
left unattended. Of the smaller birds, swifts and swallows are particularly
common, and woodpeckers are not so much seen as heard in the forest across
the road.

As for quadrupeds, the semi-feral ones consist of quite a few dogs, who
roam in packs, and whose bark is fierce, but whose bite is mostly
nonexistent, and a few cats. Properly domesticated visitors from the city
quickly revert to their wild form, showing up once a day to be fed.

Quadruped wildlife proper includes several hedgehogs, who are not the least
bit reticent, and stomp around snacking from the dog dishes with an air of
entitlement. In early summer, one can sometimes see an entire hedgehog
family scampering up and down the compost pile.

Out in the forest, there is no shortage of mink, which are hunted for their
pelts during the winter, and hares, which are hunted for meat. Wild boar,
lynx, and black bear can also be found. The wild boar are considered the
most dangerous, as they roam in packs and sometimes charge people.

Visitors & Transportation

The highway that runs on the other side of the drainage ditch from Soykino
is one of regional importance. It links the two regional centers closest to
St. Petersburg: Novgorod, a medieval capital of Russia, and Pskov, an
ancient fortress built to defend Russia against the Lithuanians. Belying
their fierce reputation, the Lithuanians never once ventured to attack
Pskov, and now amicably show up to sell vegetables and dairy products at
the big farmers’ market there, while the ancient fortress stands intact
and attracts many tourists.

In spite of its regional importance, the Pskov-Novgorod highway sees no
more than a few dozen vehicles in any given 24-hour period: a few bicycles
and two-stroke motorcycles, a tractor, a few trucks, and the odd speeding
Mercedes-Benz sedan carrying a member of regional government and/or mafia.
The slower-moving ones receive escort from the village dogs. The traffic
does not interfere with the pedestrians, who like to meander down the
center of the road. Exactly once a year, a road crew passes through filling
potholes and mowing the margins.

The main means of transportation to and from Soykino is on foot, or by
bicycle, to Sitnya, from which, two or three times a day, one can catch a
bus to Soltsy. The trip takes about an hour each away. There is just one
antique bus, which has been in continuous service since the late fifties,
and a single bus driver, who drives it and maintains it. When the engine
stalls from the relentless double-clutching needed to shift the worn-out
gears, passengers file out and wait by the side of the road, while the
driver resuscitates the engine, with his heel jamming down the clutch fork,
and his hand on the jumper cable. On a recent trip, the bus died, and the
driver took a hatchet and walked off into the forest, returning some time
later with a wooden part he crafted, which he installed, and the trip
resumed.

The driver knows most passengers by name, and often takes care to make sure
that elderly riders know how they are going to get home. The fare is very
modest, making the bus popular with elderly people on fixed (and very tiny)
incomes. I saw at least one elderly veteran, his threadbare jacket
festooned with medals, board the bus and calmly pay the fare using some
token quantity of Soviet roubles, which had been out of circulation for
about five years. The driver accepted the worthless bills without comment
and handed out a ticket.

Although Soltsy has a train station, a much shorter route to St. Petersburg
involves taking the bus to a railroad crossing, and waiting there until a
train comes by. Unfortunately, the only train that stops at the crossing is
one that stops at all the crossings, and averages no more than 10 km/h. At
each stop, there unfolds the seemingly endless ballet of baskets and bags
and children and live animals being handed up to the cars or down to the
grade, because there are no platforms. This makes the Soykino-St.
Petersburg journey an all-day affair even when all the timetables match up.

Other than the train, the bus, and the hay-wagon, a neighbor’s 1950’s
Moskvich has on occasion been pressed into service as an ambulance, rushing
people to the hospital in Soltsy (non-emergency cases are usually handled
by a doctor/veterinarian down the road in Sitnya).

Shopping

The only store in Sitnya, which started a cooperative during Perestroika,
sells bread, cigarettes, vodka, and a few varieties of canned food. Of
these, the first three are the most heavily purchased, with bread the only
purchased item on which the local people really depend as a staple. Lines
form in anticipation of bread delivery, which is baked in Soltsy and
delivered several times a week. When bread is delivered, it is bought up
rather quickly, and the villagers walk back with their prize, as if from a
hunt. They often pinch off parts of the loaves and eat them on the way,
discussing the quality of the bread, which is generally quite excellent -
much better than can be found at a supermarket in the U.S.

Social Life in the Village

The main elements of communal life are visits, barter of food and favors,
and use of sauna. Visits are almost universally unplanned and unannounced.
Most often, people stop by on the way, sometimes coming into the yards, and
sometimes simply talking across the fence.

The village has many benches scattered throughout, which consist of a
length of split log hand-planed smooth, flat side up, which is joined to
two round logs, which are buried vertically into the ground. These are
found both next to the houses and outside the fences, and are used to sit
and chat with neighbors. There are benches where you can warm up on sunny
but frosty mornings, and benches to while away hot mid-afternoons in the
shade. There was even a bench where I could stretch out on a clear night
and watch the myriad of stars, the asteroid showers, and the Mir space
station whizzing by periodically. I have built several of them myself, in
strategic locations.

Typical examples of barter involve exchanges of rabbit meat, eggs,
vegetables and other perishable items that would otherwise be distributed
unevenly and perhaps go to waste. Staples such as potatoes are generally
not bartered.

Sauna use presents one of the more complex examples of social interaction
in Soykino. During my stays there, it was my responsibility to fire the
sauna at least once a week, but since I enjoyed doing it and had little
else to do, I fired it twice a week. It was quite a bit of work, but it
made me instantly popular.

Due to lack of running water, villagers undertake serious bathing only once
or twice a week, generally on a Saturday, in a Russian sauna. This is
typically a small log cabin, located on the outskirts of the village. The
better Russian saunas have stoves that are stoked from a vestibule rather
than the room where the actual bathing takes place. The simplest Russian
saunas - so-called “black” saunas - consist of a single sooty room with
an open hearth for heating a cauldron of water and some benches, and lack a
chimney. The saunas in Soykino fall somewhere in the middle of this range:
there are typically two rooms and a chimney, but the stove is in the main
room. Due to some common design problems, the draft is weak, and the room
invariably fills with smoke while the water is being heated.

Firing a sauna involves more than an hour of concerted effort, and the
result serves at least half a dozen people. Since firing half a sauna is
almost as much effort, neighbors take turns at firing the sauna. Although
most houses have their own sauna, everyone eventually decides which sauna
is the best, with the result that only one or two saunas in the entire
village ever get used.

In order to prepare the sauna, many buckets of water are carried from the
river, about half of which are emptied into the cauldron, and the rest into
a large cask next to it. Then a fire is lit and stoked until the water in
the cauldron is near boiling. Once the fire burns itself out and the smoke
clears, the villagers come to bathe, alone or in parties. Hot and cold
water are mixed in washbasins. An integral part of the bathing process
involves getting whipped with dried birch boughs. These are believed to
have great healing powers. Although it is possible to flagellate oneself in
this manner, the preferred method involves taking turns with someone else,
and thus bathing is generally a team effort.

Churches

There is no church either in Soykino or in Sitnya. There is a large church
in Soltsy, and a smaller one in Molochkovo, about half-way to Soltsy. For
church aficionados, Pskov and Novgorod are chock-full of churches,
cathedrals, and monasteries. Some Soykino residents venture to Molochkovo
or to Soltsy to attend church for Easter, which is the main religious
holiday. Although devout religious observance is rare, most people are
baptized, and make a point of baptizing their children. This is considered
a good thing to do, independently of any belief in God or desire to belong
to the church. It is doubtful that any of the burials at the small village
cemetery in Sitnya involve priests.

Life goes ever on

It was difficult to discern the effects of the collapse of the Soviet
Union, and of the subsequent political and economic upheavals, on everyday
life in Soykino. Nevertheless, the odd imported item at the village store,
a foreign license plate on a car, and television and radio broadcasts that
would be unthinkable in the Soviet times gave away the fact that elsewhere
times have changed.

In Sitnya, activity on the dairy farm had experienced a definite slowdown,
but is otherwise no different. Perhaps the only common denominator was a
slow decay of everything man-made all-around, a gradual wearing-out. As the
economy wound down, things that continued for decades faltered or stopped.
But electricity supply to Soykino was never shut off, and the bus to Soltsy
continued to run. Bread deliveries never stopped.

Even if these things were to happen, some of the villagers in Soykino, and
thousands of villages like it throughout Russia, would probably have found
ways to survive. A few would have starved or frozen to death, or simply
sickened and died. But while the future cannot be predicted with any great
certainty, this unpredictability has to do with economics and finance,
which have a lot of importance for those in the cities, but are of only
very marginal significance to places like Soykino. No matter what happens
in the cities, it is likely that the trees will continue to grow, the river
will still have some water in it, and the villagers of Soykino will
continue to tend their plots, curse the flies, and, in their idle moments,
the politicians.

Progress comes to Soykino

Ten-year update: thanks to a small infusion of funds from abroad, and some
excellent local craftsmanship, the house has been outfitted with a much
better stove, a screened veranda, and a well.

Perhaps the biggest change that has occurred is the appearance of cell
phone towers. Now everyone has a cell phone, making it possible to ask for
a ride, a load of manure, or a load of timber, or a horse to plow the
potato field, all without the need to walk over and negotiate in person.

The general store in Sitnya has purchased a few refrigerators, and now
sells many more items, including dairy and meat. It recently held a village
festival, setting tables out in front. Locals brought home-baked pies and
sang old-time and patriotic favorites with the help of a Karaoke machine.

Given this pace of development, I can predict with some confidence that
during the next few years we will see the introduction of wireless
high-speed Internet access for the entire village.

Conclusion

Natasha and I are very happy that Soykino exists, and that our family owns
a house there. Simple and humble as it is, it has much to offer: community,
nature, shelter, and food.

As I mentioned, the collapse of the Soviet economy was barely detectable in
Soykino. Reasoning by analogy, if some of the more pessimistic (or, as more
and more of us think, realistic) predictions come true, and the developed
portions of the United States become completely dysfunctional, much more so
than they are presently, a village such as Soykino, if one existed, would
remain similarly unaffected. And if you owned a house there, you could live
there, and be unaffected as well.

Upon arriving, you would no doubt have to explain to the other residents
what happened: “You see, the economy collapsed, and now there is nothing
more for me to do out there.” And they would say: “No! Really? That’s
a pretty big thing, isn’t it?” And you would say: “Huge! Could you
please pass the pickled mushrooms?”