Rural Life: Two women in Ukraine

This post will be a deep-dive on a rural video recorded in Ukraine approximately one month ago.

There are two women shown in this video. One of them might be 55-to-60 years-old. The other might be 35 years-old. The younger woman is wearing a ring on her left ring-finger. The older woman has a ring on her right hand but not her left. I assume they are a mother-and-daughter.

After the intro images, the video goes live at the 0:50 when the older woman (let's call her "Granny") bring a horse in from the pasture on a long lead. The video shows us how she gets water out of the well (water-table 15' down) and how she put the various harnesses and tack on the horse to pull the wagon.

At 3:28 the two women drive the wagon out of the farm-yard.

One of the things I found interesting about this video are the breeds of livestock they had on their farm. The horse isn't a hot-blooded Arabian or Morgan. It is a stout work horse of 1200-to-1500 pounds. Maybe Lucky will venture a guess regarding breed, height and weight.

The chickens are a mix of tall game-fowl and more typical egg-layers. The sheep appear to be Romanov which have multiple (as many of four or five) lambs at a time.

Their destination is a slough or stagnant canal and their task is to wade out, into the water and to collect duckweed. The wind is blowing and the air temperature is probably in the 55 degree F range.

At the 8:36 mark they stop at a row of corn plants and harvest some ears and some cucumbers that were climbing on the corn-stalks. It looks like the multi-cropped them or perhaps a volunteer. Granny feeds the green corn-husk to the horse as a reward. On the left side of the frame is a flower garden with marigolds or zinnias

A milk-cow appears at the 9:40 mark. It might be 3/4 Holstein and 1/4 Angus. 

At 12:44 the two women take an old Ford Transit van over a two-track to a distant vegetable field. It looks like they are getting a little bit of sleet as they harvest (sugar) beet leaves. This looks like another mixed planting because I see cabbages in the sugar beets. Maybe they transplanted cabbage plants into the rows of beets where there were gaps.

At the 14:24 mark I see the younger woman do something that makes this video look "authentic". She automatically pulls a weed and pitches it to the side as she is harvesting the sugar beet leaves. It does not appear staged or artificial. It is just something she does. Serious gardeners cannot walk through a garden without pulling weeds.

At 14:30 it shows them pulling culinary (red) beets. 14:44 they are pulling carrots which they transport with tops attached. At 15:35 they start digging potatoes. The potatoes are exceptionally clean and scab-free.

16:25 shows the younger woman tying they corners of a blanket together to use it as a bag to transport some of their bulkier vegetables.

The cargo on the return trip

At 17:05 we learn that the van has a manual transmission, an option not available in the U.S.

At 17:15 the sheep appear.

Maybe a little bit of Beagle. Maybe some Jack Russel.

Many of these kinds of channels start out showing "real life" but the tools gradually get newer and fancier. This basin isn't new if the scarred enamel is any indication.

At the 19:50 mark, the younger woman takes cull vegetables and potato peels to a mill to grind them in an electric mill that looks like it is at least 40 years old.

The ground-up vegetables are cooked to soften them.

24:15 Potato pancakes are on the menu for the humans

The toy quad (too small for an adult) near the lower, right corner of the image is the only evidence I saw of a child. Not that the front wheels are pointed in different directions. Perhaps he is the one shooting the video.

The way the berries glow in the muddy light makes me believe that they are fluorescing under the UV light that is penetrating the cloud cover.

At 26:20 The women start picking the most beautiful raspberries imaginable. It is a much larger planting than what they would need for home use, so I think they sell them as a commercial crop.

These are bearing on primo-canes so it might be the varieties Polka or Polana.

31:45 The leaves from the sugar beets are ground up with other vegetation for animal feed. This grinder is also an antique with cast iron flywheels and driven (perhaps) by a large displacement, low RPM gas engine. 

Miscellaneous notes

Other crops I saw were grape-vines, a very small orchard of fruit trees. There was a cameo appearance of Highbush Cranberry (Viburnum opulus)

The wood in the wood-stove appears to be prunings from fruit trees and a little bit of broken pallets. The large round piece with the pronounced medullary rays is most likely oak but could be chestnut. Medullary rays are the features that look like the spokes on a bicycle wheel.

Many of the large trees look like Siberian Elm.

The women seem very matter-of-fact about life. The younger woman seems to be in a very good space as she is peeling potatoes.

I never saw the end-use for the duckweed.