When a father teaches his kids
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| A six year-old girl picking apples |
The dacha is approximately 30 miles northwest of Kharkiv, Ukraine and 10 miles south of the Russian/Ukraine border.
While it might seem very dark, Afanasy and his wife are raising their children to be orphans. They are very intentionally, and intensively passing on the life-skills that those children might need to survive without them.
That is a night-and-day difference from how most Americans either helicopter parent or ignore their children and allow them to feral/free-range and then toss the task of teaching their children "over the wall" to the professionals.
For most of our history as a species, parents had very little time to pass skills on to their children due to our short life expectancy. A child might be born to a sixteen year-old and both mother and father were dead before that child was sixteen. So, our genetic coding is to be a sponge for useful knowledge in the first years of our (extended) lives, years that are now mostly-wasted scrolling on tablets and watching animated princesses and mermaids.
Link to the video at the 4:19 mark. I ported you in where he is talking about he advantages of injection molded, plastic crates for storing apples. One factor that he did not talk about is the ergonomics of the plastic crates. Because they are wider in the direction of shoulder-to-shoulder, and shallower than most wooden crates, the center-of-gravity when full is closer to your spine and they are much easier on the back to pick up and carry.
He starts training his children on how to pick apples without damaging the trees and how to grip them and put them into the buckets without bruising them.
At the 6:56 mark he is showing how to twist and lift the apples off the branch (although he is not narrating about that).
At the 8:25 mark he is working with his six year-old (my guess regarding age) daughter. First he demonstrates (while talking) then he inspects her as she works. Finally, he affirms that she is doing it to his satisfaction. We communicate our expectations by what we inspect.
At the 9:06 mark it is clear that his children crave his approval and are proud of their skills.
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| As modest as her harvest is at this point, it still represents two-weeks worth of apple consumption for her...and she is just getting started. |
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| At the 13:30 mark, Afanasy is handing his youngest daughter (about 2 years-old) apples and she is transferring them to the bucket. His main purpose is not to get work out of her (frankly, she is slowing him down). It is to train her. |
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| Afanasy described an apple-picking apron that he used in a commercial orchard. Link to a similar apron. Note: The apron is not shipped with the model wearing it. |
Great weather for working outside
Thank you for the apron idea. While I don't have an apple tree, I think this will be great for picking corn. I plant my rows a little to close together to get my garden wagon down at harvest time. I usually scoop up my dress to make a large "pocket" to carry ears of yummy corn to the wagon. I'm sure it will work for other garden produce also.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if I line it some how with a shorter pouch--could I use it for blueberries. I harvest lots and lots of blueberries!!
Add a removable washable plastic box in your soft fruit pockets. I used a large Poland Spring water bottle the first time. Careful cutting made it useful.
DeleteWhat an interesting concept, ERJ. The reality of the Ukraine make is more visible than most. And the fact that with modern medicine and society - at least in the First World - we assume our parents will be there for years and years, let alone that they will transfer skills.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know what variety those apples are? I have a volunteer tree in my backyard here in Crescent City, CA, and the apples look just like these!
ReplyDeleteAfanasy mentions two by name. The one with red apples was garbled and I was not able to figure it out. The late, sour green apple was Reinette Simirenko which may be a synonym of Wood's Greening. Very similar to Granny Smith.
DeleteReview of apple HERE: https://adamapples.blogspot.com/2010/10/reinette-simirenko-woods-greening-apple.html
Supposedly cold-hardy down to -34 C (-29F) and tolerant of difficult environments.
In an earlier video he mentioned "Florina" as one of the varieties in their orchard.
DeleteThanks for the reply. Our local Ag agent says our tree is "probably" a Jonagold, which is a cross between Johnathan and Golden Delicious. Florina is that with a bit of Rome thrown in. Good apples.
DeleteRE: life expectancy
ReplyDeleteRemove farming accidents and infant mortality and come back with the real number.
We don't have good U.S. data for Century XIX and before, but in 1900 the leading causes of deaths in the U.S. according to CDC figures were - in order - influenza, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal infections, heart disease, stroke, nephritis, accidents, cancer, and diphtheria. Accidents and infant mortality were less common in rural areas than most people think, but more common in urban areas. Life expectancy of an infant who survived to age 1 was 32 years.
DeleteThe Russian empire did not keep such data but in Ukraine (as the rest of Russia), you would have to add starvation from famine about every 8 years. Some of the famines killed over 30% of the Russian population.
SNIP Last Major Russian Mass Starvation
DeleteThe last large-scale famine in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union was the Soviet famine of 1930–1933, which also included the Holodomor in Ukraine and parts of Kazakhstan
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
+1
. This disaster was caused by a combination of forced agricultural collectivization, unrealistic grain requisitions, and severe crop failures, and it killed an estimated 5.7 to 8.7 million people
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
. It was the most catastrophic famine in modern Russian history, and no other nationwide mass starvation has occurred in the Soviet period after that.
Historical context
1930–1933 famine: Affected the grain-producing regions of the USSR, including Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and parts of Russia. It was driven by Stalin’s collectivization policy, which disrupted agricultural production and led to mass starvation
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
+1
.
Earlier major famines: The 1921 famine (caused by drought and post–Civil War disruption) and the 1891–1892 famine were also severe, but the 1930–1933 event was the last of its scale
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
.
Recent events
While there have been localized food shortages and humanitarian crises in recent years, including in 2022–2023 due to war and sanctions, these have not been nationwide mass starvations in the historical sense
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
. The most recent documented mass famine remains the 1930–1933 Soviet famine.
Seems politics had something to do with that.
There is a wealth of oral histories tucked in various parts of the internet.
DeleteOne example from here https://www.ucrdc.org/holodomorsurvivors/onyskiw.html
"They took all the seeds, beans, wheat and corn from the house. My grandmother had hid it in little boxes to sow the garden next year. They took everything from the house. When they couldn’t find anything, they would break the pots and jugs with rods. In Poltava oblast the pots and jugs were made of clay and they broke them because they were angry they couldn’t find any grain. They said that we buried our grain. So they would go out into the garden and searched the ground. These were all Komsomol ¹ members and they had to prove that they had found something hidden by each family."
The "rods" show up in several of the narratives. They used them to probe the ground to find clamps where root vegetables were stored and where sauerkraut was being fermented.
Stalin was pushing to industrialize the USSR. The only commodity he had to export to get hard currency was grain. He had to crack a few eggs to make his omelette. And while he was at it, he could crush those pesky conservatives who believed in private property.
Wikipedia is a lousy source. The last major famine in the USSR was from 1972 to 1974 due to crop failures across the country.
DeleteWe provided the Soviets with over 40 million metric tons of cereal grains in a 1973 deal so starvation did not occur west of the Urals, but there was widespread starvation due to the crop failures east of the Urals. Several hundred thousand Russians still died from Siberia to the Far East.
The huge depletion of U.S. cereal stocks was a more significant cause of the 1973 world inflation spike than the Arab oil embargo. Nixon's deal with the USSR was called "The Great grain Robbery". Ford refused to repeat the deal in 1975 and more Soviet citizens starved to death.
The Eurasian continent has a meteorological problem. It is so vast that rain clouds from the oceans will periodically fail to reach the interior, resulting in crop failures. The Russian Orthodox Church was the traditional bulwark against famine in Russia, and its vicious destruction by Ukrainians is the most significant factor in the severity of the "Holomodor". Nestor Makhno sent trains through Ukraine and at every stop they fed Orthodox clerics into the fireboxes, alive. This orgy of violence was greeted with great enthusiasm by the Ukrainian populace.
Oddly from your reply 10x25mm again politics seems to be part of the problem.
DeleteYes, meteorological problems are true, but mankind has delt with that for eons.
Something about keeping grain reserves UNLESS Politics or war steals them.
The politics of destroying the Russian Orthodox Church the "traditional bulwark" seems political.
Just as the current Ukrainian Comedian trying to eliminate the Russian language and Churches there.
You can always count on politics, especially left wing politics, to exacerbate every natural problem.
DeleteWhile that is sad, I can see his point, considering the situation over there.
ReplyDeleteJoe, have you seen from this interesting Ukraine video series anything about SEED SAVING over there?
ReplyDeleteAs primary crops like cabbage, turnips, carrots and beets and so on require you to overwinter the root for a seed supply.
I have only seen seed saving in bits-and-pieces.
DeleteAfanasy's family holds some potatoes back for seed but they also buy some new seed potatoes every year. Often, it is to trial a new variety. The problem with saving your own seed potatoes for too many years is that the virus loading in them grows and the yield potential declines.
All of the crops you mentioned are biennials. They grow through the summer and fall and then produce seeds the next spring or summer.
Turnips and rutabagas are very easy to save seeds from and the roots can be over-wintered in-place in many climates. Radishes carry their tops higher in the air and are more likely to freeze but can also be over-wintered. One strategy for radishes is to plant them late so the plants are small and the growing points will be below the snow cover.
Carrots are vulnerable to inbreeding depression which makes the seeds feeble and germinate poorly. I cannot speak to beets except to say that they likely have the same issues as radishes regarding the growing points freezing.
Cabbages are an entirely different venture. It is my impression that hybrid cabbages are almost universally grown by subsistence gardeners in eastern Europe. They are willing to pay the money to buy seeds, many of them sold by companies based in the West. The 2X production and uniformity of the heads is a make-or-break deal for them.
All good points Joe, except that Heirloom seeds were developed by GOOD Farmers that KEPT their Best plants for seed and sold or ate the rest.
DeleteSeeds SO good after a while Good Farmers could SELL them.
A bit like Apple Tree Varieties, eh Joe?
Dirt Farmers fail to save the best and often fail to rotate crops into new sites to avoid Virial loading on their potatoes and such.
My friends at the Farming College tell me all soil has plant viruses. Healthy none-stressed plants deal with them well.
However not rotating crops to reduce virus breeding in favorable crops will overload the plants' ability to resist and poor crops (or crop failures occur).
Odd how God created healthy immune systems even in plants as well as humans :-)
I am not here to argue.
DeleteSoil contains nematodes. Nematodes feed on plant roots. Nematodes have been demonstrated to spread (vector) virus from one plant to the next. Sometimes the virus cross species lines. So, yes, there are virus in the soil.
There are also virus in the air. Leafhoppers and other insects also vector virus.
Seed potatoes in most states follow a very strict protocol of hierarchy with first ortet constantly being purged of virus via heat treatment and drugs. Sometimes this is done at the growing tip (i.e. growth rate of shoot outruns virus ability to infect new cells) or at the micropropagation level.
New plantlets are virus indexed by attempting to infect selections that produce visible symptoms of virus like curled leaves. More recently, antibody tests are used to validate virus-free status of materials.
Virus free "Zero' ortets are grown in screened houses. The material they produce are sent to isolated fields for the first multiplication of material. The plants are blasted with insecticides to minimize leafhopper transmissions. In the old days, the soil was fumigated to kill all nematodes.
The steps in the hierarchy that follow have increasing percentage of spuds with virus, but in general, each infected spud is infected with only ONE virus. That is kind of a big deal because there are at least 40 virus of economic importance that have been documented in the US. While seed potatoes infected with one or two virus might produce a viable crop, at some point the increasing number of virus is enough to kill the plants.
Different potato varieties show different symptoms to each virus. Some are virtually symptom-free except for reduced yield but are Typhoid Mary to other potato varieties.