Russia

Stories from Russia Continued, written by Peter Hagerty, May 19, 2002.

Peace Fleece's History with Russian Sheep Farmers

Sheplova Village, Moscow Region		Galina, Peter, Dalis and Pavel with horse
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 I have chosen to travel to Russia alone without other American friends. Before that time, starting in 1985, I took many farmers and sheep producers to visit the various republics but after 1991 I felt that it was no longer safe and for the next seven years traveled alone.During this time, I met the Potstrelovs. Living in the remote and tiny village of Sheplova at the end of a dirt road and miles from the nearest phone or grocery store, Pavel and Galina live in a traditional log home and farm with horses, sheep, cows and chickens. The first American to return to Russia with me,Dalis Davidson, visited their farm late last Fall and wrote the following account for her diary:
Landing in Moscow airport in November
I find I’m excited and am not quite sure what to expect. My husband, Houston, and I are accompanying Peter Hagerty to Moscow to visit five sheep farms in the surrounding countryside. We will be escorted by Peace Fleece’s Russian director Luba Reotova who will be our driver and translator. I met Luba two years ago when she stayed at our farm in Maryland. In Moscow Houston and I stay in her friend’s apartment, three tiny rooms decorated with red rugs on the alls, Russian dolls and three TVs. After a restful night’s sleep, I look out of our 8th-story windows and see a winter wonderland. A few inches of snow have fallen during the night and left a beautiful white blanket. I like this first view of daylight, even though the sky is steel gray and the air looks very cold. A troop of Russian police walks by, eight in all and quite young looking, clouds of air escaping from their mouths. They wear long gray coats and fuzzy black hats, very official. An old woman is sweeping the snow off the street out front with a loose handmade broom. She’s hunched over, and I hear swoosh, swoosh, swoosh as the broom cleans wide swatches of snow off the pavement. After a hearty breakfast we leave Moscow for Pavel and Galina’s farm in Sheplova, the first sheep farm on our tour. It’s a three-hour drive, and Luba whisks us through Moscow, honking at other drivers who cut her off or get too close (door handles nearly touching!). We’re finally in the country, the roads get narrower and the villages farther apart. Night has fallen now, along with the temperature, and I wrap my arms around myself in the back seat and peer out the window. The villages are tiny now with small wooden houses, smoke curling from their chimneys and a single light bulb yellowing the windows. We make the turn to Sheplova, then two miles down a snow covered, dead end road. I see a twinkling of lights off in the distance. We hope Pavel and Galina are home, as they have no phone and don’t know we’re coming. Luba almost gets stuck in a ditch making a wrong turn into their drive. Dogs greet us, we get out, open the wooden gate and enter one vestibule, then another. Finally we are standing in their warm log home. After many greetings, hugs, kisses and introductions, we have tea and bread. A large Russian fireplace, the sienna color of adobe, takes up one wall of the living area. I sit on the bench that’s placed in front of the hot wall, put my back against it and am immediately comforted. Peter picks up a guitar that’s hanging on the wall, plays and sings an impromptu song, Sheplova Blues. Pavel joins in, drumming on a homemade stool and yelling/singing his Russian version. We all start clapping and their dog howls and whines, making us all laugh. The night goes on, we’re warm, fed and totally happy, beginning a new friendship with two Russian farmers. I couldn’t imagine a better introduction to rural Russian life. We prepare for bed. Luba and I put on coats, hats, mitts and Galina gives me her valenkis (felted wool boots that go up to my knees, and fortunately, fit perfectly) and we race into the cold outside to the fence line to pee. The sky is star strewn constellations, galaxies, the Milky Way, planets, all there for the viewing. It’s so dark and crisp and silent. The ground is frozen hard with three inches of fresh, white snow. We squat in the dark, talking to each other in our own accents about the clarity of the evening, both inside and out. The boys go to the back of the house where another wood stove is warming up the two sleeping rooms. The girls get the toasty front room. Galina makes up the double bed for herself and Luba and I take the smaller bed. Galina puts more wood on the stove. I hear it crackle and pop, and it makes me feel warm and cozy, especially since I’m snuggled under many heavy wool blankets. I drift off to sleep listening to my two Russian friends whisper in the dark. I hear Galina up before dawn (which this time of year is 8:00 a.m.) stoking the fire and preparing breakfast. I sit up in bed and see the most amazing red sunrise through the lace curtains. Outside is a snow- covered landscape; weathered outbuildings, a big garden put to rest for the winter, a tiny steep-roofed outhouse, a wide, flat field, the forest, and wrapping it all up is this fire sunrise. I rush to get dressed, grab the camera and venture out to a farm greeting the new day. I hear the rooster, coaxing everyone to wake up. The barn is a few steps through the fence gate. It’s a low building with deep, overhanging eaves, made of logs with sisal chinking. Ducking through the doorway, there’re many animals to greet me. The chickens are up pecking around, Pavel’s workhorse is patiently awaiting his breakfast, and the ducks are quacking to get out of their enclosure. The main part of the barn has a narrow center aisle with three lambing pens on the left and sections for veal cattle and a milk cow on the right. The Romanov sheep, a gray, woolly breed able to withstand the brutal weather, are cozily housed on the left in three separate lambing pens. Three ewes have given birth to three sets of triplets and are being pampered in their pens. They have distinctive white markings on their face, resembling tiny Holstein calves. Romanovs have 2-4 lambs twice a year lambing machines! I immediately crawl over the gate to the last stall and fall in love with a two-week-old lamb with a white face and two large, black circles around her eyes. I pick her up and hold her close, nuzzling her and smelling her sweet lamb scent. She eventually baaahs for her mom, not sure of this human intrusion and I gently put her down. I’m called for breakfast, which consists of bread, cheese, eggs, whey, butter, jam, tea and coffee. Everything we eat was grown, raised or killed on the farm. Tea and coffee were the only purchases. After eating too much, we go out to work, following Pavel’s lead. He hooks up his huge workhorse, a beautiful, bold animal with a mighty neck and gentle disposition. In his youth Pavel was a horse trainer and ferrier in Moscow and his horses are very well managed. This horse wears a hand hewn yoke and hooked to it is an old, weathered, flat wooden sled. The horse, with snorts of white breath bursting from his nostrils, pulls Pavel on the sled towards large round bales of hay stacked in the distant fields. We follow behind with pitchforks. The hay resembles giant frosted shredded wheat because the top layer is encrusted with 10 of snow and ice. Luba hacks away with an axe, cutting a line across the bale so we can peel away the outside. The horse moves the sled right in front of the bale and we heave, grunt, push and roll the bale onto the sled. We each stick our pitchfork into the sides, balancing it as the horse pulls the sled over the bumpy bits to the barn. The men unroll the bale, like a hay carpet, forking it into the barn while Luba and I jump on it as it gets higher and higher. We move five bales then break for lunch. I discuss the possibility of buying a lamb from them, keeping her on their farm, sort of like an adoption. After many attempts at translating, Luba finally makes them understand the request. I want to help them out, so they will be able to continue to raise sheep and my little lamb will grow up and have more lambs and they’ll benefit from my ‘donation.’ I see a lot of head nodding so get my purse and I buy my first Russian Romanov lamb. We walk out and take many pictures of me with my little bundle. That night at dinner I give out presents to our hosts. I’d brought along sheep vitamins, bungee cords, handmade soap and while I was there, I knitted up a wool headband for each of them. They model the headbands, Pavel puts on his leather coat and shows off his new headpiece. I couldn’t begin to repay them for what they’d given me, a warm welcome into their home, a look at how other farmers a world away from Barnesville, Maryland can make a living and be happy living off the land and being nearly self sufficient, avoiding the rat race we call a life. Leaving Pavel and Galina’s the next day was very emotional for me. I really felt I’d bonded with them, even though I spoke no Russian and they spoke no English. Smiles and nods go a long way! I hugged Galina and couldn’t let go. She talked to me the whole time and I’m sorry I couldn’t understand a word of it. I’m hoping it was an invitation to visit again Dalis Davidson carries Peace Fleece at her yarn shop in Barnesville, Maryland. Ludmilla Korneva is the newly elected president of the Moscow Area Sheep Association (MASHA), an organization formed over the last two years in cooperation with Peace Fleece, Land O'Lakes and sheep producers in the Moscow region. Ludmilla and her husband live with their two children on their own 'private farm' two hours west from Moscow in the Istra Region. Both Ludmilla and Sasha were past directors of State and Collective Farms under the old Soviet system and are now very much part of the vanguard of a new and progressive agriculture community. Ludmilla does not speak English but we can have correspondence e-mailed to Moscow where incoming and outgoing translation can take place in our office there. We can also arrange FAX transmissions to and from them in Russian and you can enjoy the adventure of having a Russian/American from your community translate your correspondence.

Pavel with haystacks	Galina with summer lambs


	Hay cock with lambs, Sheplova Farm
Pete haying at Istra Farm


Luba cutting hay	Luda hand-dying wool	Tamara w. grandaughter