Traveler, Writer, Aquarius, Peace Corps Volunteer
The evidence
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Somewhere in the outskirts of Donetsk, past the airport and the northernmost bus station, beyond the newly built and extravagantly fashioned homes of the �New Ukrainians�, on a bedroom-sized plot of dark roasted earth rich with minerals and soft as silt, it occurred to me that digging these rows of mostly evenly spaced egg-shaped holes, six across and eight deep, was the most meaningful thing I�d ever done. The work itself was common and repetitive, and no different than the daily toil of millions of other sun-drenched laborers with calloused hands and mud-crusted fingernails. But for me, far removed from blistering-fast microprocessors and graphic interfaces, from proletarian cubicles and aristocratic glass office buildings, from calculated status reports with their own agendas and critically-pathed Gantt charts and project plans, this was something real and non-fabricated, whose yield was not simply ripe tomatoes and sore muscles, but life itself.
When we arrived at Valery and Tamara�s dacha, which is the Russian word for summer home but used also for the plots of land Ukrainian�s grow their food on, the sky was a pastel patchwork of blue and gray, thin wisps of clouds scattered across the afternoon horizon. The air had a crisp chill for June and was pregnant with moisture, ready to give birth to a steady rain at any second. Yet a driblet of brightness in the distance gave hope that the weather might turn for the better. It was the kind of day that demands an umbrella but suggests sunglasses aren�t completely out of the question.
I got out of the car and looked around. The entire dacha is a little smaller than half a football field. The land is a quilt of flat earth, sprouts, trees, and shrubs, everything lining up in even rectangles and rows. To the right is their cottage, an incomplete two level edifice of white brick and dirt that looks like it had been bombed out years ago. Inside were old work boots and packing crates that resembled army footlockers, the kinds of boxes guns and ammunition are always seen with in movies. In front rests a wooden trough filled with rainwater and a thin film of algae. The cottage is flanked by a picnic table and makeshift grill made out of stone with an iron grate on one side and peach and apricot trees on the other. At the far end of the dacha stands an old wooden tool shed and what looked to be an outhouse, and a worn black hose hides under the grass, its skin cracked and leaking intermittent spouts of water as tiny fountains.
Valery disappeared in the belly of the cottage and returned two minutes later with a ragged pair of work boots, ankle high, caked in mud. From what I could tell, beneath the patina of brown grit the boots were actually faded black, and they were meant to zipper up the side but the zipper was broken off so they were constantly open. I turned them upside down and dirt and stones came spilling out. I thanked him and put them on, placing my light blue Puma sneakers in the trunk of the car, feeling foolish for bringing them in the first place.
Valery than bade me follow him straight ahead to the far end of the dacha, where we turned left and headed towards a patch of cherry trees. There were two types � chereshnya, which are more yellow than red and taste sweeter, and vishnik, which are the classic red cherries found in most markets. We spent the next few minutes plucking the fresh fruit off the branches and having a little feast. The ground was littered with discarded seeds and fallen cherries. Right by the trees was a patch of strawberries, each no bigger than a quarter, that were just starting to ripen. They looked so puny compared to the giant genetically modified strawberries I�m used to seeing in America. I wanted to kneel down and try one, but since I didn�t see Valery eating them, I figured I�d hold off.
After a few minutes, Valery went into the tool shed and returned with a variety of gardening instruments. He had two shovels, a rake, and a small hoe. I could barely contain my eagerness to get started, and if I hadn�t had any direction, I might have dug up the whole ground. �All right,� I began, �where should I start? What do you want me to do?� I took a shovel from Valery and waited by the large plot of soil to the left of the cottage.
Meanwhile, Tamara was preparing the saplings for planting. Beginning in early March, she started the eight month process of gardening in Ukraine by getting all of her seeds together � tomatoes and peppers � and planting them in the cutoff bottoms of plastic water bottles. She purchased fresh dirt from the market and packed about forty containers with it, burying the seeds below. Watering them as needed (tomatoes, apparently, love water more than peppers do), she nursed them along as the first sprigs of life began to erupt through the topsoil and gasp for air. When I moved out in mid-April, the stalks were about two inches high; when I came back in early May, they had grown into toddlers, then a whopping four inches. Now, they stood as adolescents, ready to undergo puberty and mature into adulthood. They were about six or seven inches high and some were beginning to flower. The tomato plants were even giving off the faint smell of the fruit they would soon bear.
Tamara tried to explain what she wanted me to do. I went to the upper-right corner of the square of soil and dug my first hole. It was round and deep, and to me seemed a capable womb. Tamara, however, was not impressed. She took the shovel and quickly redid the hole as a shallow oval, about a foot-and-a-half long by eight inches wide. Each hole was to house two seeds, she said, not one, and tomatoes don�t need to be planted very deep. Copying her example, I started the long chore of digging holes. As a novice, it took me twice as long to do every hole, because I was never sure if the size and depth was right. But I tried to make them symmetrical and roughly the same size.
While I dug the holes, Valery was off in another corner of the dacha raking unwanted leaves and twigs off the soil and preparing the ground for planting. Tamara, meanwhile, followed me around with the hose and filled all of my holes with water. It was clear that of the four of us, I was getting the best workout. I say four of us because who else was along for the ride but Jura, my favorite half-brother, who spent the majority of the six hours we were there sitting in the front seat of the car, either sleeping or singing at the top of his lungs, and smoking cigarettes every ten minutes.
It didn�t take long for me to get into a rhythm, and despite the chill, I was now warm enough that I needed to roll the legs of my sweatpants up. At one point I even considered taking off my tee-shirt. As I thrust my shovel into the lush brown umber of earth, I couldn�t believe how malleable it was, how soft and rich, how perfect for growing. I wanted to rub my hands in it, to taste it. I thought that this soil was capable of growing even the most recalcitrant seeds. It was perfect in every way.
It was then, halfway through the forty-eight or so holes, that I felt a rush of contentment, a sense of purpose and propriety, like this is the way things should be. This is right, I thought. This is worthy. I wondered how we ever strayed so far from the simplicity of a good days work. There was this overwhelming sense of serenity and closeness with the earth, a holy union of man and nature. It struck me that everyone who has never been on a farm or done any gardening should immediately don work gloves and grab a shovel. I thought about the value of nature programs for inner city kids and how this epiphany of order in an otherwise chaotic world might also bloom in some kid who�s never been out of the hood. I got more satisfaction out of digging those holes than I did at almost any time in the past five years of doing project management.
I was a little over halfway done when Valery and Tamara suggested that I take a rest. �I�m fine,� I said, wanting to finish the job before sitting down. Valery was already on his second break, sitting at the picnic table and puffing away on his smoke. He laughed and assured me that there was plenty more work and that I should take a rest. Taking his advice, I set my shovel down and joined him on the bench. He joked about this being the Ukrainian version of a health club and being the only exercise people need. It seemed to me, however, that the only exercise he was getting was walking around the field dragging his rake and raising his hand to his lips every few minutes to smoke.
Tamara, however, was assiduous and unrelenting in her quest to plant vegetables. After she watered all of the holes, making little mud basins, she waited for the water to soak through and then went about the business of planting. One plant went into the far right and left of each hole, and then the holes were packed with wet soil. When we were finished with the first plot, it looked like a square of acne, dimpled rows pocking the field�s cheek.
Jura was already sitting at the picnic table when I joined him. Tamara went into the car to retrieve lunch, and Valery returned with a handful of freshly picked green onions that he then washed and cleaned and set on a small plate in the middle of the table. For lunch, Tamara had made a salad of cabbage and cucumbers, shredded and marinated in vinegar, and a version of plov, which is saut?ed cubes of meat, spiced, and stirred into a kind of moist sticky rice. I was famished and attacked the hill of food on my plate. In between forkfuls, I took a fresh spear of green onion and dipped it in a bit of salt, relishing the fresh bitterness, the taste of earthed imbued in the flesh. After a second helping of salad and two open faced sandwiches of thick chunks of ham that was more fat than meat and slices of cheese on baton, a large Ukrainian roll, we enjoyed hot tea and cookies for dessert. The tea was contained in round, fat steel thermos that looked military issue from the second world war but kept the liquid surprisingly hot. Steeped in the tea were fresh mint leaves from the farm that Tamara had gathered and dried at home.
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