I enjoy watching videos where gardeners/small-holders use traditional tools and materials. This one is in Moldova which is the poorest country in Europe with an adjusted GDP/Capita of $5200/capita per year. That compares to Germany's adjusted GDP/Capita of $48,000/capita per year.
Moldova was on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, offered no strategic military or economic advantages to the USSR. From an agricultural standpoint, it averages a bit less than 2" of rain per month through the growing season, maybe on-par with Amarillo, Texas.
The kind of agriculture you see in this video is relatively immune to the cost of oil and fertilizer and pesticides.
Joe's commentary:
0:47 Feeding the chickens. These might be meat chickens based on the number of males. Interesting feeders with the slats across the top.
1:43 Willow shoots with leaves to supplement ground corn
2:08 This kind of hoe is called a Grape Hoe. It is very easy to replace the handle. It is a tool that can last for 50 years because it is designed for maintenance.
2:14 OSHA just had a heart attack. Pops plugs grinder into unshielded, female end of extension cord
2:31 When you use hand tools like hoes and shovels to any degree, you want them SHARP. It can reduce the effort to cut roots by 70%
2:50 Based on height of the bean plants, that would be about the third week of June in Michigan. He is wearing a jacket so it is probably cool and in the morning. THe soil appears to be exceptionally dry.
3:13 I am not sure what the clear bottles are for.
3:50 He takes off his jacket. No clouds. Slight haze.
4:03 Tool storage. Liberal use of concrete rebar
4:14 Another mysterious clear bottle.
4:36 and 5:15 Firewood storage. Looks like walnut. Maybe they had a tree die.
5:53 Jump ahead to mid-July (Michigan equivalent). Pops is installing bean-poles. They look like Black Locust poles based on the leaf and thorn scars. Based on the lack-of-staining on cut surfaces of bottoms of poles, this is the first year he used these poles.
5:30 Pops isn't actually hoeing between the bean plants, he is smothering the weeds by moving loose dirt from between the rows and hilling or mounding between the plants in the row.
6:26 Using a "tree-planter" like tool to make holes to insert poles. It looks very efficient. You can see by the growth of the beans that this is at least two weeks later than when he was hoeing the beans.
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| Vinifera leaves showing texture of leaves and lobation |
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| F-A hybrid leaves. |
6:59 Concrete posts for the grape arbor. These are clearly not pure Vinifera (European) grapes but appear to be "French-American" hybrids (perhaps Kuhlman, Seyval or Baco hybrids). F-A grapes are much more resistant to fungal diseases which is a boon to subsistence gardeners who don't have the money to buy chemical fungicides. Another bonus is that many F-A grapes will produce fruit even after a heavy frost because the secondary buds are fruitful.
7:59 Use of a manual, wheeled cultivator in the vineyard.
8:55 The editors did not lay out the sequences in chronological order. This is late-June Michigan equivalent. Good close-up of grape cluster before the flowers open. Pure Vinifera has rugose or textured leaves. These are shiny, which is a tell that they are hybrids.
9:16 Odd that they did not harvest the walnuts. There must be a story there.
9:55 Transplanting tomatoes. Clearly jumping around in time. That would be very late May in Michigan equivalent time.
10:42 The tomato vines grown in a greenhouse that was overly shaded. They also look nitrogen starved. The plants appear to be planted very close together by our standards. He was undoubtedly working with what he had and they will undoubtedly be fine.
12:37 It looks like he sleeps outside. Given how dry it is, he probably doesn't have many mosquitoes.
13:17 Bottling wine for the up-coming week.
13:39 The pantry is getting pretty bare. Lots of room for the upcoming harvests.
This channel has a few more videos where they have this kind of content. If it interested you, you might check it out.
Those birds look suspiciously like Delawares
ReplyDeleteLessons to be learned in these kind of videos that we might really need sometime.---ken
ReplyDeleteThe outdoor bed might just be used as a lounge chair - not uncommon in drier climates. AZ in the old days, my grandparents always had one somewhere in the shade just for sitting. The wheeled cultivator is interesting idea for old junk bicycle frame. We use empty plastic bottles and cans on post to spook some critters away (?). Reminds me I need to sharpen my hoes (I use similar grape hoes, except for one pointed one that is handy sometimes. Great handle supplier at House Handle Company - weird website, but good people who have always come thru for me (sometimes after a phone call to figure out what they call the tool in Missouri - no personal connection other than happy customer.)
ReplyDeleteOut here in the West, some of the older houses have a "California room." It's nothing more than a large screened porch, usually on the 2nd floor with beds and maybe a couch or chair in it. Before A/C, this is where people would sleep during the summer months!
DeleteThe slats on the feeder trays probably keep the wood from warping outward at the top. Such a simple tray, and yet it's assembled tongue in groove!
ReplyDeleteI bet the farmer hangs the clear bottles with water in the sun to disinfect the water.
In the Coast Guard we called that kind of cord a "suicide plug." We sometimes had to do something like that for testing, but we ALWAYS hooked everything up and THEN plugged into the wall! Looks like the Makita has a "U.S." plug and he doesn't have a Euro adapter for it. You gotta do what you gotta do...
ZERO engine noise in the background! Just chickens, birds, and a radio... No trucks. No cars... NOTHING! 'Sounds like Heaven!
The soil looks southern California dry!!!
I think the slats are spaced so the birds cannot get into the tray and "scratch" the feed out. Without something to stop them, they can waste up to 1/3 of the feed...which creates very well-fed mice and rats.
DeleteIt should not be a US plug since that would imply the tool is 115 VAC. I don't know how easy it is to switch them to 230 VAC. Russian plugs have 4 mm pins, as opposed to the 6 mm pins on western sockets. Czech and Italian sockets have a male earthing pin in them as opposed to the side connection in Germany and Austria. Sometimes we have to do some adapting.
DeleteHis armory should have a 22, single shot is fine. A shotgun, single shot is fine and gotta have a rifle. That part of the world should have a good supply of black market 8mm Mausers, SKS's, Mosin nagants. He might have a nice old 25, 32 or 380 in his pocket.
DeleteWish I had his skills, knowledge, patience.
Great film.