Mementos of Russian Summer

A Russian peasant without an Ó„ÓÓ‰ (garden) is like a fish without water. The villagers of Chukhrai slave over the land from May to September, working like oxen from dawn until dusk – hoeing, planting, watering, weeding. While for me tending a garden is not a matter of subsistence as for the other villagers, it is a matter of convenience, since we don’t have any stores. I get much joy out of growing my own produce, though it doesn’t come easy. Mosquitoes and gnats harass us to no end. I go out dressed in thick clothing from head to toe and a mosquito net over my head. In July, the hot sun invites the great gadflies out and even the horses hide in the barn. Yet the villagers appear not to notice – with no bug spray or nets, they spend all day bent over their neat rows. Trofimovna, who lives across the street, comes in from her vast plot each evening with her face all puffy and her eyes nearly swollen shut.

We wage an eternal battle with the black-and-yellow striped Colorado beetle, which many believe the Americans sent to Russia to devastate potato crops – the staple of the Russian diet. An invasive plant called ‡ÏÂË͇Ì͇ (American girl) by the locals has to be weeded out, or it will take over the land. As an American girl from Colorado, I shoulder the blame for both curses.

I collect leaves of sorrel plants in the field and nettle in the forest to make a sumptuous, vitamin-rich soup with potatoes and onions in a bouillon base. These plants kept many of the villagers from starving during World War II and in times when the harvests were poor.

In July, the grasses grow long and the villagers go out with scythes to cut hay to feed their cows in winter. All day, they swing their scythes, making nearly full arcs around their bodies. The grass falls in neat rows, and soon the open fields around the village are laid flat. When the grasses dry, they are stacked and compressed in dense piles. The men toss the hay up on the stacks with their pitchforks and the women trample it with their feet. With three horses to feed, my husband Igor and I are out in the fields, too. We tire within a day, while men and women twice our age keep at it for two weeks. Their muscles have been trained for this for years, generations even. We opt to buy hay instead.

After haymaking, the villagers go to the river to wash off the grime of the past year. With no running water, most wash infrequently, sometimes in barrels of water warmed on the wood stove. Our 65-year old neighbor Vasily has probably been clean (and sober) only a dozen times in his life. The last time he bathed in a barrel two years ago, he came down with a bad cold and vowed never to do it again. We invite him to wash in our ·‡Ìfl (bathhouse), but he refuses.

To round out our days and our diets, Igor and I take walks in the woods to collect berries and mushrooms. Chukhrai is surrounded by the Bryansk Forest, one of the largest intact forests in Europe. Dense pine stands harbor sweet blue bilberries and tangy red cowberries. Hummocks of mosses in swamps hide tart cranberries. We walk along a fern-lined trail, stooping down to pick berries every few feet. More bilberries make it to my mouth than my pail and I am ashamed to return home with only a cup’s worth of berries and my tongue and fingers stained blue. Inevitably we find mushrooms along the way – fat boletus or crumbling russule mushrooms make nice additions to soup or sauté.

August is my favorite month of the short Russian summer. The flies are gone and the mosquitoes are mostly sated. The days are warm and long. My tomatoes are sweet and juicy, the potatoes are plump, and cabbages form tight heads. For the first time in my 10 years in Russia, I try to can vegetables for winter. I long to be like resourceful village women who pull jars of vegetables and fruit preserves from endless supplies in their cellars in the middle of winter, when it seems that there is nothing more to be had.

Having gathered all we can from the land to see us through the cold months ahead, we all can afford a short rest. The villagers sit outside on benches in the evening watching the sun set.

I walk over to Trofimovna and ask, “What’s your favorite time of the year?”

“Akh, they’re all bad,” she says. “The work is never done.”

Alas, summer is over shortly after it has begun. Barely enough time from frost to frost to reap a meager living from the land. Soon, the only thing to remind me of its warm days and green grass will be the jars of cucumbers and tomatoes I pull from the shelves of my cellar in the dead of winter.  RL