Besides being in my bed – after it has warmed up from my presence – my favorite part of each day is the walk to school. A (and I’d like to emphasize the “a”) rolling hill a short distance away marks the edge of my village. Colorful houses dotted between tall trees that seem to have withstood from medieval times. Rows upon rows of grape vines – with colors ranging from white to green, red to purple, and seemingly everything in between – recently cut corn fields, gathered to resemble miniature teepees, until the deep purple sky, fading to pink, to green, and ultimately a spectrum of blue obscures what would become the neighboring village. A Ukrainian village non-the-less, known for their “harbujaria,” or large pastures of watermelon, where Russian is the only language spoken and the fork in the road forces a quick left-or-right decision, will it be into the corn or sunflowers this time?
At the gate of each house piled high are ears of corn and intermingled pumpkins. Nearing the thousands, each corn of ear was hand cut, hand picked, and delivered by a horse and cart (which was probably bribed into the job by the prospect of ryciu –home made vodka). I had the good experience of preparing the corn. The temperature had dropped to a brisk 35 degrees and after about 5 hours of kneeling, foraging through each stalk for the hardened ear of corn, my back, fingers and I were all ready for warm bowl of borscht. Easily, these are some of the hardest working people I have ever met.
Grape season has also come to close. We picked each grape, picked up those that had fallen, and never had my back been so sore as that following day…..and days. After picking, we ran each grape through a hand cranked “squisher” into a large wooden barrel. A few days later we again pressed the grapes, using a different hand-cranked machine. They was so much pressure on these grapes that they held the form of the barrel they were pressed into, and continue to hold form after the barrel was turned over to release them, and still a week later continue to hold form. A bucket is placed at the bottom of this extraordinary machine to catch every last drop of juice. It is all placed back into the large wooden barrels and left to ferment. We have four different types of wine fermenting, natural juice, and compote (a different kind of juice that is boiled with sugar and other fruits and is delicious both hot and cold).
My family has almost completed preserving all of our food for the winter – cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, cabbage, WATERMELON, various salads. Their timing has been impeccable as the last week has proven that old man winter is well on his way, and in a very noticeable way. A few days have reached 0 degrees Celsius, and other days aren’t too much warmer. I thought living in Montana’s winters had hardened me a bit to cold weather, but we were always able to enter a warmed house, or to build a fire, or you know jump in the shower. The cement of the schools and houses don’t exactly warm-up quickly when the sun hits it during the day. All of us teachers keep our coats on during class, and so do the students. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous for the true winter to hit, that being it is the beginning of October still…
Not to worry, my family has what is called a “Soba.” It is a wood-fire stove type contraption with ceramic tiles the covering the wall all around it. As you build a fire in the soba, the entire wall heats up and soon the whole room is warm. I have a feeling this winter I won’t be lingering too far from our common room, that is, where the soba is located. I also have a feeling that my long johns might become second-skin.
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