Greenhouse planting

Twelve days ago we were able to plant around 740 cucumber plants. We are using this year as a sort of experiment and therefore have no real heating system in place. The temperatures have not been ideal causing the plants to lose a bit of their bright green color, but they are growing. Most had 2-4 soft leaves when we planted them and now have 5-8 leaves. They are planted in 8 rows 3-4 ft. apart with 10 in. between plants.

We hung strings from the ceiling for the plants to climb and we are training them to go up the strings. We monitor the temperatures, and open the windows if the temp goes above 30C (anytime the sun is out) and close them when the temp goes below 20C. It is amazing how much warmer it is inside during daylight hours. When it gets a bit warmer we have some ceiling fans we are going to install vertically in the two front windows to help with cooling.

For watering, we have sprinklers hung from the ceiling and drip tape in each row. The well (that was installed last fall) is directly outside and is used to fill an old 3000 liter tank in which we mix fertilizer with the water before watering. It seems to work well to use gravity to water (with the drip system), but we may install a pump to speed up the process.

We hope to have fresh cucumbers in a couple weeks.

Dave

Stuff, Part 2

A popular topic of conversation among foreigners living here is how to get by without things we’re used to, specifically food items that aren’t available here – how to make maple syrup and brown sugar, where to get flatbread to make tortilla chips, what vegetable makes a good substitute for celery. I am forever scouring the market and grocery store aisles for hard-to-find things, hoping that they’ll appear. I dream about supermarkets at home, full of powdered sugar, black beans and beef bullion. At first, not having things from home seemed like a hardship, then a challenge, now more of a reality of everyday life. And I should note that it has fun to try new foods that aren’t available at home. Recently several conversations I’ve had have made me appreciate the variety of products available in Ukraine. Growing up in a capitalist, materialistic country means that there’s lots of stuff for you to buy, so you get used to that. I’ve been spoiled, without even knowing it. But my friend Oksana grew up in the Soviet Union, and several times she’s described to me the lack of goods in the stores. In clothing stores, dresses, shirts and slacks were all the same style and color, just in different sizes. Shoes, too. Markets sold fruits and vegetables grown within the USSR. Once as a child, Oksana visited Moscow and saw bananas for the first time. She marveled at this strange, exotic fruit and wondered what it tasted like. After the fall of the Soviet Union, new, imported goods began to appear from Turkey. And now she can buy bananas for $.36 per pound at any corner store, brought to her halfway around the world from Ecuador.

After those conversations, my searches for rare ingredients seemed less important, and I’m more aware of the new things that appear on the store shelves. I now appreciate the occasional appearance of dried rosemary and sage, parmesan cheese and peanut butter much more.

Laura

Greenhouse Prep

Stuff, Part 1

Living in a different country and a different culture makes you think about your stuff. The lines between categories of material possessions become more defined – what things you need to live, what things you need to be happy, what things you can do without. Whether it’s good or bad, we spend more time here thinking about what we have and don’t have, what we need and don’t need, what we’d like to have but just can’t find, and what we’d like to have, but can do without. We’ve developed these thought patterns mostly because our friends and colleagues here have less material things than our friends and colleagues in the States. It’s become more obvious to me in the last year that what you think you need to live depends a lot on those around you. For example, during the 16 months that we’ve been in Ukraine, I’ve purchased a total of one item of clothing. A sweater. Dave bought two: two pairs of long johns. It’s not because we don’t have money to buy clothes, it’s just that the clothes we have are enough. The people I spend time with here rarely buy new clothes, let alone new clothes for every season, so I don’t either. If I did, I would stick out. When we went home in August, I rooted through my boxes to find some summer clothes (which I hadn’t brought with me when we came) and brought back a big stack to Ukraine. Soon after we arrived, I realized that I should’ve brought about half as much as I did. Wearing a different new outfit every day for a couple weeks made me feel strange, overdressed. This topic came to my mind a few weeks ago as temps rose to around freezing and I decided that it was warm enough to wear something else than my three warmest sweaters (which I’ve worn all winter). Although it feels good to not be so influenced by the need for a frequently updated wardrobe, I’ll admit that I am ready for some more variety.

Laura

Parliamentary Elections

On Sunday, March 26 parliamentary elections were held in Ukraine. Much excitement had built up to the day – apparently there were 45 parties or “bloks” on the ballot, but we saw maybe about 10-15 advertised in the weeks before the election. What a choice. The main square in Donetsk was filled with colorful tents, flags and brochure-distributing campaigners. In the end, the pro-Russia Party of Regions, supported by central and eastern Ukraine (where Donetsk is located) won by a small margin, followed by two of the more western-leaning parties – the former prime minister’s party was a close second, and the current president’s party (orchestrators of the 2004 “Orange Revolution”) was a distant third. The rest of the votes were taken by smaller parties, including the Socialists and Communists. Since no one won a majority, coalition talks have now begun, and it seems to be anybody’s guess who will form a coalition with whom, even though the parties all seem to have quite differing agendas. This election is quite important, as it will determine who has the majority of seats in parliament. The leading party will also select the prime minister, who will have more power than the president.

There was a lot of concern among Ukrainians about the economic (and political) stability in Ukraine after the elections. So far things seem quite calm, as they did on election day.

Laura

Internaut Basketball

Yesterday I had the privilege of participating in a basketball tournament with the kids from Our Home. The tournament was organized for the government internauts (Ukrainian orphanages) in Makeevka. Good Shepherd Charitable Fund (the organization that Our Home belongs to) seems to have a good relationship with them, so they are also able to participate. Four of the five internauts were represented (so there were 5 teams including us). From what I understood, internauts have between 200 and 350 kids in them at all times, which is a pretty strong contrast to the 30-35 kids that live at Our Home. It was an interesting experience and I will write about some of my observations.

First of all, with such large populations, these internauts have a larger number proportionally of taller older kids. Most of our competitors’ teams were comprised of 17- and 18-year-olds. Our oldest two boys are 16 and the other kids were 14 and 15. Combined with the court being so narrow that there was only a three-point line at the top of key, this provided for some interesting basketball.

In the boys’ first game we were down 20-0 at halftime and not able to get the ball past mid-court much. Being a rather positive person, I was still impressed at halftime as I thought they had done a really good job on defense. And things only got better from there. We only lost 38-12, and most of the boys were in rather high spirits. For our second game we played the eventual champions and were able to keep it close, only trailing 15-14 at halftime and eventually losing 25-18.

The girls won their first game 20-8 on the shoulders of one of the older girls who is one of the best players (boy or girl) at Our Home. In the second game, they couldn’t get their shots to fall, and lost 8-2. That was a little sad, but all in all I thought they did a good job and could easily have been champions. They had won the championship last time, and it was unfortunate that we couldn’t bring Our Home its second athletic trophy.

The referees were an older couple and I thought they did an excellent job. They let the kids play and called the obvious calls. They had to raise their voices several times and call a couple of technical fouls, but they kept the games going and there were no fights. This was no small feat, considering the players they were dealing with. There is a stereotype in Ukraine that the only kinds of kids in internauts are thieves and drug-addicts. It is possible that I appreciated the referees because they seemed to call things our way more often than not. For the most part, our kids treated the referees and other teams with respect and I was proud of them for that as well.

It was interesting to note the contrast in the bleachers between our kids and the rest of the kids there. I know that I am sounding like a proud parent who sees his/her children as little angels; some of the kids from Our Home will probably develop problems with the drugs and crime (and some may have already). But knowing their hard life stories and seeing them sitting in the gym, smiling and joking around with each other and the adults that accompanied them, really makes one feel like Our Home is taking an active approach in making a difference.

The tournament was a really positive experience for me. Some of the kids were a bit disappointed and thought they could have done better. At the same time, several of the boys said that they hadn’t ever done that well before. As I mentioned above, I have always felt that I have a positive outlook in life, but it seems that some of these kids are mentoring me to be even more so. Life has been very difficult for most if not all of them, yet they keep on smiling and goofing around. It was interesting that several of the kids asked if I was going to go to the next tournament. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Dave

Farewell to long underwear

The coming of spring in Ukraine is a long-awaited event for everyone, for a variety of reasons. The most obvious ones include sunny days, green landscape and warmer temperatures. One of my most important, and probably less common, reasons for anticipating spring is the banishment of long underwear from my daily wardrobe. And I’m happy to say that, three weeks after the “official” first day of spring in Ukraine, temperatures have risen high enough that the long underwear has been officially banished to the closet, not to be seen until next November.

During the winter, long underwear is an essential item of clothing for me, worn every single day. Since we don’t have a car, I spend lots of time getting from here to there by walking and waiting for public transport. And once I get to where I’m going, warm indoor temperatures aren’t guaranteed. Few places I know are warm enough that I don’t need the extra warmth reinforcement provided by long underwear. And although I couldn’t do without the extra warmth, the day I can throw them in the closet and forget about them for half a year is a day of celebration. Why? They are bunchy, they make my clothes fit worse, they’re an extra skin that stifles me. Here I suppose I should say that long underwear has come a long way. My long underwear isn’t the thick, waffly-looking, baggy cotton stuff that old men wear for pajamas. Technology has come a long way, and my long underwear is fairly thin, smooth and stretchy. “Cuddleduds” is the cute, modern brand name. Still, without my extra layer of clothing, I’ve felt quite liberated the past few days. Spring is truly here.

Laura