Village celebration

Garry and Maxim went down to check out the celebration taking place around noon in the village. There was a program with singing with the ladies and schoolchildren as you can see in traditional costume. Garry says that the last part of the program there was a tree with eggs hanging from it (in the last photo) and the teacher asked questions and the student who answered correctly received one of the eggs and a handful of candy. From what Maxim tried to explain when we had soup for lunch when they came back, the holiday is to mark the beginning of Lent (no meat eating.) Last year I found out our Russian teacher, like many people in the village, was keeping Lent and took the bus to another village to attend services at the Orthodox church there.

There was a variety of foods from what the guys told me, all the typical Ukrainain dishes- cabbage or potato filled pyrogies. Garry says he didn't think to take a photo of the laden tables- but he said the most impressive thing was all the leftovers still there when everyone was leaving.

Food was provided by a big farmer who recently won a court case against the guy who had the former collective lands under lease- apparently he now only has valid leases for about 100 hectares. Not sure what its going to mean to us- we have valid leases for 36 hectares for the spring, but if we are farming the actual pieces (the other guy had agreed we could use the same amount of easy to reach land that was not planted in winter wheat by him) they will be small pieces all around the village, and in the middle of other fields. He was also providing free vodka (along with the coffee and tea) in an effort to get people to sign their shares over for him to farm (he's offering a deal with payment in product rather like the other guy.)

Monday and Tuesday are also holidays from work it seems to celebrate international womens' day. Victor came out on Friday and gave me a box of candy for womens day- and when he and Garry went to the town office to find out where the two new shares we leased are (signed the papers last week), they brought chocolates for all the ladies who work there- 8 boxes if you are counting. By the way the pieces of land are on opposite sides of the village- one is somewhat close to another one we got before.