Day 1

*****

I've arrived here at the camphill community. It really is in the middle of nowhere. 3 hours by bus from St Petersburg to a bus stop surrounded by fields and forest. Then a further 20 minutes by car through a tiny village with about 3 shops, across a beautiful river to the community.

The community consists of 4 houses made from straw-bales and wood in a mix of old russian and norwegian cottage styles. It's very cosy inside each house with everything hand-made from wood and stove's in most rooms. Two of the houses are pretty big with 3 floors and about 15 rooms.

Also there are 4 farm buildings of assorted sheds and barns. One rather ramshackle collection of wooden sheds houses the horse and the pig sty where we have a huge, fat pig with 10 little piglets who are so sweet and always squealing and running around, while their mum lies there and makes contented grunts.

The biggest barn houses the 10 cows and their 5 cute little calves who always come up and lick my hands. The cows are not the usual  black and white ones, they are brown and have big horns..especially the large bull - he is quite scary at first, but really its all for show and he is actually quite affectionate and likes a scratch behind the ears.

Also there are 3 brown geese, who are considerably more scary than the bull and chase us around the yard sometimes with loud hissing noises.

The final farm building has just been built (again by the group of norwegian architects who come here one a year to help out) and it houses the bakery and wood workshop. Next to it are the two greenhouses where we grow copious amounts of...**** ahem, no actually we grow copious amounts of tomatoes and cooking herbs there.(The temperature is about 28 to 30 degrees here in the day, but quite cold at night.

The first day here I spent working in the garden with this cool german guy called Simon (pronounced by the germans as Seeman, and by the russians as Simeon). Quite a few people here have funny names and it's hard to remember everyone. The guy from Armenia is called Hamlet!

In the morning we picked tomatoes and beans (and ate lots too) and in the afternoon we went with the students and collected onions under a blazing sun. It really is pretty backward here - we used a horse and cart to transport the onions from the fields to the farm buildings! :(

Day 2

*****

After breakfast at 8am, we worked from 9am until lunch at 1pm - tending the tomatoes, lettuces and peppers (so many!). The soil here is incredibly dry and we often need to water the many sections of the vegetable garden.

After lunch we go to our workshops again at 3pm (until 7pm). I'm working every day in the garden so after lunch we spent quite a while weeding and also clambering around on the roof of the barn hauling up boxes of all the onions we gathered so they could be layed out to dry on the roof.

At 7pm we had another real nice, healthy and very home-made supper. (Mark told me that all the food here that we put on the table for our meals (with the exception of pasta) comes only from the community).

In the evening today, some of the russian guys prepared the Bannia (it's a kind of *very* hot home-made sauna). It took about 2 hours for the bannia to be ready. Basically it's a log cabin in the forest and is split into 3 rooms - the entrance room where we change our clothes, the shower room and the main sitting room which contains the stove.

After trekking a while through the forest, I and the other 3 guys (an english, a german and a russian guy) entered the bannia and fortunately it wasn't as hot as some of the (slightly masochistic) bannia's that I've been in before.

However after a few minutes the russian guy decided to remedy the problem and threw a ladle of water on top of the stove (before I could stop him) and immediately a cloud of steam came up which rose the temperature of the room by about ten degrees from a hot 85 degrees to a very hot 95 degrees. It's a strange sensation when one's nose and toes feel like they're burning up and when you decide to breathe through the mouth instead, then it feels like your lips are burning up.

Every 5 minutes we'd run outside to the cold-water shower room and back (screeching like a load of gorillaz). All the water at the community comes from a deep well and it's *freezing* cold!! When we were back in the bannia room, the russian guy (for good measure) threw another couple of ladles of water on the stove and the temperature soared to a seriously masochistic eye-watering 105 degrees.. I lasted about 2 minutes before doing a runner to the shower.

After about half an hour we went and sat on the bench outside, chatted drank beer and watched the forest all around which was alive with crickets and various animal noises. Felt like we were in a jungle!

DAY 3

*****

Today is saturday so in the morning we have a few hours of cleaning, then after lunch we have free time for the rest of the day. Fortunately for me, today is a special day. Every few years a theatre/drama school from moscow come to the community to give a

performance for the residents here. So after lunch we gathered in the main hall (it's actually pretty small) and sat down to what turned out to be an amazing puppet play followed by a concert.

The whole production was performed by the music teacher and about ten class 11 pupils. All of the puppets (almost life size) and the sets they designed themselves and much of it was improvised. The concert was about 5 russian and armenian folk songs sung in many parts and with guitars and violins. It was really awesome!

After the performance, the pupils got out boxes of presents (mostly chocolates) that they had bought and handed them out to the residents here, who were really happy and excited about the whole thing.

DAY 4

*****

Yay! - had a nice lie-in today until 10am, then had the rest of the day free. - well that was the theory anyway.

But unbelievably, even here - totally out in the styx where I came as a last resort to escape computers, even here they have 2 laptops for getting emails (via a mobile phone) amd for doing accounts and letters. So, as always wherever I travel, it seems like some kinda destiny that I will end up repairing a computer and coincidently one of the laptops here had ground to a halt, so.....

I've just spent the last 2 hours restoring all the software on it (lucky that I brought my tools-disc ay).

I guess once a computer engineer, always a computer engineer!!

DAY 5

*****

Another very hot sunny day with clear blue skies and not a cloud in sight. Spent the morning as usual gathering

vegetables and salad from the garden and taking it to the kitchens in each of the 4 houses for the cooks. Our meals

here really are as fresh as it gets, the milk and yoghurt, cheese and butter that we have on the table is straight

out of the dairy where our own cows are milked every day. Most of the vegetables we eat are picked the same day and

we're still gathering a great number of blackcurrants, redcurrants and raspberries which we either eat with the

yoghurt or turn into jam.

A lot of the extra food gathered now in the summer months is preserved in large jars for the winter, in the form of

jams or pickled tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, garlic or cabbage. The number of jars of conserves that we've made in

the last few days is pretty impressive.

Day 6

*****

Today was a miletsone day for the community as it's most longstanding and most loved housefather Mark left the

community after 10 years living here. He was one of the first people here and only a few of the villagers even

remember when he first arrived. There were many tears shed by the villagers as he left to live with his wife and

child in England.

We had a concert to commemorate his leaving and various cakes and many speeches.

Day 7

*****

Was an overcast and very hot night, could hardly sleep at all. In the morning there was no sun, but instead a thick

mist everywhere and suddenly the country seemed like it was in the middle of november, not august. But it was the

strangest mist, not like a cold clammy english mist, but more like a tropical +30C mist.

By the afternoon the mist had cleared and it was another hot sunny day. We spend the afternoon taking hundreds of

cuttings from the strawberry plants and putting them in boxes of compost for replanting later in the week.

Also spent a few hours weeding the carrot fields, which didn't seem like they had been weeded for months. Though

they're in better condition than the strawberry patches which are so overgrown with weeds that its sometimes hard to

find the plants.

DAY 8

*****

Spent quite a long time searching the cucumber "jungle" for any cucumbers that might have been missed in the

previous weeks. Unbelievably we found over 15 big cucumbers, half of which were so old and tough that they had gone

yelow. As it turned out though it wasn't a problem, as the russians are masters at making pickled stuff and also we

had a lot of cucumber soup today.

The polytunnels also were in desperate need of sorting out as the massive tomato harvest was threatening to topple

all the tomato plants. We picked several crates of tomatoes and two of the russian Babushka's (old ladies) showed us

how to pickle the tomatoes in large jars with sealed metal lids which keep the tomatoes preserved for upto a year so

the community has something to eat during the winter.

In the afternoon one of the houseparents saddled the horse to the cart and and we spent an hour shovelling compost

onto the cart for the horse to transport down to the vegetable fields where we stood on the cart and tossed out the

compost onto the ploughed field.

It was pretty good fun riding on the cart, except that after an hour the horse got bored, or crazy (or both) and

suddenly decided to make like a 4x4 off-road vehicle and plunge into the hilly, overgrown area nearby..taking the

cart after it, and us on the cart with it too. It was pretty exciting kind of "extreme sport" for a minute, after

which Lena got the horse under control for...well, a good 10 seconds before the horse then plunged off at high speed

into the vegetable beds (with us clinging on behind in the cart).

Day 9

*****

Was very tired again after all the physical work in the garden and like many days, I fell immediately asleep after

lunch and woke up when my alarm clock sounded at 3pm (we get lunchbreak from 1pm until 3pm every day). Another

pretty hot day today +25C.

Spent some time in the field planting strawberry plants in the morning. We're managing to get quite a lot planted

for next year because there have been 4 of us guys in the garden this week (the russian guy Alexei, the german guy

(who is also the head gardner) Simon, myself and the new german guy Thomas. Though today is Alexei's last day here

as he's only come for a week.

The students (villagers) here are much more independant that I've been accustomed to at the Camphill in England and

they all know the timetables very well, take care of themselves and after we explain which work we're doing today,

they go off and do it. (with varying degrees of success of course!). They only need some occasional reminding to get

on with the work.

It's really great when the villagers are around - they're all so cheerful all the time and always talking. It's

difficult to be serious or unhappy when they're around because some of the things they say are so funny!

We all spent most of the afternoon weeding. It's an activity here which has many advantage... it's free of charge,

it's better exercise for muscles than any gym, you get a better suntan than at any beach in spain and you don't need

to worry about the activity coming to a premature end - because it's neverending! :-)

everyday we have supper at 7pm and at 8pm we have free time for the rest of the evening and as usual I went running

for half an hour before the sun sets at 9pm and the mosquitoes come out. The running is becoming easier, despite the

hard physical work everyday, I'm finding I can run further each day and feel less out-of-breath. Hoping to reach 4

miles pretty soon. :)

After the students went to bed, I met the 3 german guys at Nansen house (which currently has no villagers living

there) and we gathered in the sitting room to chat and play guitars which was cool. It's interesting which of the

songs from our collections are those which we all know. One of the guys (Daniel) who plays the mandolin, knows some

amazing Czech folk songs which he sings by heart (in Czech language). Going to get him to teach me some. He also has

a book of Irish folk songs, many of which I know - so we're going to have an Irish folk concert next sunday.

Day 10

******

Still can't believe how good the food is here. Absolutely nothing is from shops and there is no packaging, so we

have almost no rubbish that needs throwing away. For breakfast today we had Manaya Kasha, which is a kind of

ground-rice pudding and yesterday we had a semolina pudding for breakfast, always there is also bread, cheese and

salad on the table and lots of milk and fresh homemade yoghurt and cottage cheese. Had fresh raspberries too!

Gathered masses more tomatoes, basil, parsley and lettuces today. Then spent a few hours transplanting strawberry

cuttings. Next year they are going to have one seriously BIG strawberry harvest.

It's again a hot sunny day and I'm getting seriously brown now. Still gotta put on some suncream at times though.

After 8 hours working in the fields under the blazing sun. Had a water fight today while we were watering

strawberries. Was pretty covered in mud after digging up the mud while wearing only shorts. Probably been looking

like some kinda Native Indian.

In the afternoon Danil was ploughing one of the vegetable fields and we heard loud swearing in German wafting over

the wind from the field. When we got there we found out that the community tractor (a fairly historic one from

communist times) had broken down and the axel had snapped! Well Danil said it's not especially surprising as the

tractor gets quite a hammering every day with all the work on the farm.

Also today we gathered all the onions into boxes which have been spread all over the roofs to dry for the past 4

days.

After supper me and Thomas trekked across the fields to the river near the small village nearby. It's a pretty wide

river and meanders so slowly across the plain that it's inky blackness is like a huge flat mirror. It's depths look

rather scary, but the scene is very beautiful with lots of lillies along the banks and the occasional ripple from

the fish feeding on the insects skimming above the water.

We thought the water would be freezing, but it felt ok after we dived in and very refreshing after such a hot day.

Actually it was after a few minutes of drifting off downstream watching the sunbeams on the water, that we noticed

how freezing the water actually was and decided to swim back to the shore while the muscles still worked. Very nice

there though, gonna go back again tomorrow. (Noticed a few locals standing on the other shore looking a bit

non-plussed, so swimming is clearly not something that people do much here!

As it was friday we had another Bannia (sauna) in the forest at around 10 at night (it was pretty late 'cos ladies

always go first and we waited a long time for them to come out. Lonya (the russian guy) had started preparing the

stove in the Bannia at 4pm this afternoon! It was another very good and very relaxing Bannia. Even hotter than last

time as everyone wanted to try throwing water onto the stove and each time the temperature rose by about 10 degrees!

We also tried throwing tea-tree oil onto the stove (one of the women had said it's good medicine) but after sitting

some minutes holding our eyes in misery, we decided that perhaps we might have put a bit too much of the oil in the

water... so we resorted to throwing on a load of beer instead which was a definite improvement! - it makes the whole

room smell of freshly baked bread! - quite a surprise when you consider how different the beer actually smells.

When we came out of the Bannia it was dark and the whole land was swathed in a ground mist about 10ft high which

made the whole community look quite ghostly sillouetted against the night sky with golden light from the lamps

shining out through the mist. It was totally surreal and deadly silent except for the sounds of crickets in the

forest. The sky was filled with stars and much clearer than in England and we noticed a strange glow in the sky to

the north which I guess was some phenomenon like the Aurora Borealis.

DAY 11

******

Today we were up at 6am and packed for a trip by coach to a historic monastery 2 hours from here.

The getting-up process was fairly haphazard as we seem to be very short of working alarm clocks. At the departure

time of 6.30 there were only 5 of us there out of the 7 so the trip that was organised for the students ended up

being 4 coworkers on the coach to look after 2 students!

The trip was actually being organised by an organisation for the disabled who had laid on a large coach to take out

all the disabled and special needs people in the county. However, in usual russian fashion, the original good-intent

was not very well put into practice and the coach-load of people that arrived at the monastery actually contained 3

disabled people, a few kids, the four of us coworkers and around 35 older russian people.

The monastery itself was located on the very top of a hill in the middle of styx, overlooking a large and beautiful

lake with forest all around as far as the eye could see.

There is the main church building in the middle, painted pure white and with blue, dome-spires like out of a persian

fairytale. Surrounding it are some large out-buildings with the living quarters for the nuns and also a vegetable

gardens and a bath-house down near the lake. Everywhere was very pristine and with well tended flower-beds and

paths.

Amazingly, while I was sitting in one of the gardens, a large bird-of-prey began wheeling through the air around me

and skimming just above the ground until it landed just a few yards from me and grabbed a mouse and took off again.

Wow, I've never been so close to one of those birds before...it was like being in a David Attenborough documentary

but more real!

During the morning we spent an hour and a half in the church attending a complete Christian Orthodox service. It was

my first time at such an event and was very interesting (although I wouldn't want to attend it every week). The

church was nearly filled with many 'country-folk' who had travelled from all the small villages around and it was

quite a strong mix of colourful clothing and many baskets of fruit and vegetables that the people had brought there

- either as donations or to be blessed. The people in the countryside here wear far more colourful clothes than the

subdued colors of the city people.

There were no chairs in the church so everyone stood for the entire service. My legs were pretty glad of a rest by

the end, and I was impressed that the 90% of the audience was composed of old russian Babushkas (grandmothers) and

none of them seemed to mind standing for so long at all.

The head priest, wearing an impressive curtain, spent the entire service chanting a sermon in a loud monotonous

voice and wandering around the alters and the audience swinging a large senser of incense with many bells attached.

His chanting would have started to get pretty annoying after the first half-hour if it hadn't been for the choir of

6 nuns (dressed completely in black raiment like in a middle-east country). The nuns had really amazing singing

voices and sang straight from the printed score in 3 parts with a complex harmony that went off and on for the

entire hour and a half. Was very impressive and did much to help drown out the monotonous priest.

Many awesome, brightly coloured paintings adorned most of the inside of the church and also parts of the outside of

the church and surrounding buildings. The paintings were very realistic and considerably better than those in

English churches. They depicted various saints, angels and scenes from the the bible and had been painted long ago,

but touched up several times since.

All around the sides of the church were various small altars where people were continuously walking up and putting

candles around them and kissing the icon (painting).

At times it felt rather awkward for myself and the two german guys during the service, owing to the fact that

everyone kept bowing low and crossing themselves every minute when the priest came to the end of a sentence in his

chanting. (The 3 of us are all fairly atheistic regarding Christianity and were a little non-plussed by all the

bowing and crossing).

This was especially evident when the assembled company filed past the altar for the holy communion and to kiss the

hand of the priest (very strange custom!). I had to take our student in the wheelchair upto the front so she could

take some bread and kiss the priests hand and of course after her it was my turn.. well it was kinda embarrassing as

I shambled past rapidly, mumbling apologies in english while the priest withdrew his hand, looking slightly put-out.

After the service, the priest and his retinue made a procession outside of the church to where a slightly aged but

typical looking russian Lada car stood with all it's doors and bonnet open. As I looked on bemused, the priest, his

retinue and the family who owned the car, all gather around it and spent a quarter of an hour chanting and swinging

the senser of incense around the car. Extraordinary - I never imagined that it was part of the churches work to go

around blessing cars!

Before our bus was due to depart, we headed down to the lake where there was a jetty and bathhouse surrounded by

reeds and water-lillies and the dark waters of the lake which looked deep and probably quite cold. The shores of the

massive lake were completely unspoilt by civilisation and the island in the middle looked like something out of a

medieval fairytale.

On the jetty there were was a small queue of men standing patiently waiting for the ladies who were in the bathhouse

and also swimming in the lake. The waters of which are believed to be sacred. We also felt like taking a swim (as it

was a hot day), but after half an hour we realised that we're not as patient as the men around here (who had been

waiting ages) so we gave up and satisfied our tourist obligations by filling our bottles from the holy spring and

buying a photo of an icon.

On the way back we briefly visited another monastery which was similar to the first except that it had a wall

completely surrounding it and was painted yellow instead of white. Inside it had considerably more ancient icons

(paintings) on the alter...some of which must have been several centuries old judging by how faded they were. The

reverence with which people approached the icons was very apparent and they would go up and kiss the glass, bow low

and cross themselves. (As in England, it was alost entirely old people attending the church). The bible in this

monastery was particularly ancient and impressive, with a solid iron covering that was completely etched with scenes

from the bible.

As in many places in russian where travellers stop, here there was the usual gathering of old farmers wives on the

roadside selling jars of fresh vegetables and berries. The jars must have contained about 15KG of blueberries that

they had gathered and I know from experience that it takes ages just to gather a handful, so I was surprised that we

could buy a whole kilogram for just 60 roubles (1 pound).

Eventually we arrived back near our Camphill Svetlana and the coach left us all there by the side of the mainroad in

the middle of nowhere. It's amazing how the roads in russian can go for hundreds of kilometres through just thick

forest with an occasional farmstead and no signs of civilisation. Well this was how we felt sitting there by the

roadside waiting for an hour or so until one of the houseparents came and picked us up. When we got back I had a

pretty major case of sunstroke after being out the whole day in the blazing sun (minus hat).

Soon after returning we had bible supper, which is a bit similar to WMH, - we all sit around in a circle round the

candle and sit in silence for 15 minutes, then someone read a chapter from the bible and someone else passes around

bread rolls and red-juice and we sit for an hour eating the rolls and discussing the meaning of the bible chapter

and also the nice events from the preceding week.

DAY 12

******

Ahh, thank god it's sunday so we got to lie in until breakfast at 10am. Although I got up at 9am to ensure that one of our students (Minky) wouldn't start using too much initiative with the preparation of breakfast. (Sometimes he's inclined to start doing things that he shouldn't, such as cutting bread (with slices 3 inches thick) or making tea by filling the kettle so full that it floods the floor or putting out the yoghurt in the sun for an hour).

In the afternoon we celebrated the birthday of one of the students and had an impressive array of different russian cakes (which are totally delicious!).

Around 8.30 we all gathered in the sitting room for the music concert that we had planned (but not rehearsed for) and launched into a random array of songs...which was pretty how the concert progressed for the whole evening with the guitar being passed around and people singing any folk songs they could think of, with various people joining in if they knew the song. Danil, the german guy, played some awesome Czech folk songs, the two russian girls sang two russian folk songs with their amazing opera-like singing voices and then Thomas and Seeman played some hilarious german campfire songs.

One of the houseparents played some classical music on the piano and after that the guitar was passed around to me and ...erm...under the pressure of popular demand, I agreed to play for the kids "Old MacDonald had a farm", which was undoubtedly not as impressive as the earlier high level of music, but went down surprisingly well, especially when I did fairly good impression of most of the animals which drew roars of laughter.

Around 10pm the students and children went to bed and all the coworkers and houseparents remained to continue the concert (or shambolic jamming session as it might also be described). We played various russian campfire songs (enacted very badly by all of us foreigners, who sang with great enthusiasm, but little tune!). After a while the guitar came around to me again and (with the help of Danil) we launched with great gusto into a few Irish folk songs with Danil playing the mandolin and me playing the guitar and singing loudly (and probably very badly). Then we all attempted to play greensleeves to give the russians an idea of old english folk songs, followed rapidly by The Doors (whisky bar), Simon & Garfunkel and then Leonard Cohen.

It was really a great night and great atmosphere. Didn't finish until around midnight and forgot that we had to wake up real early next morning (monday).

DAY 13

******

Mosquitoes are still a major *pain in the a###* (and everywhere else too!). They are absolutely everywhere, and especially after sundown one wouldn't want to stand still for more than a few seconds unless one had some very strong mosquito repellant over the entire body. (they even bite through the trousers!). Fortunately during the day they seem to sleep and I get only the occasional bite, but each bite swells up hugely so I guess they are a different variety than those in England. I am eternally grateful for the mosquito net that I bought in London a few weeks ago - it was worth every penny!!!

Today a big group of us went to the river again and swam and messed around with the fisherman's boats and met with a few of the lads from the village. The boats were in pretty bad shape and probably worse shape after we almost sank one of them. Was a good laugh though! :)

Still very hot and sunny, have to use suncream sometimes still as the sky is almost cloudless and we're outside most of the day. Spent most of the day weeding the tomato and carrot crop which desperately need saving from the weeds if there is to be a good harvest to get the community through the winter. It's pretty backbreaking weeding for 5 hours, but we're developing our muscles pretty well! We've also planted a load more strawberry plants, we seem to have them everywhere now.

Tomorrow we're going to gather all the herbs and parsley from the garden and dry it for the winter. Should be an interesting process, and hopefully easier on our backs after all the weeding.

In the evening I had a rather shocking experience in the shower here - I tried to turn the shower knob and got electrified!, felt like my hair stood on end! I guess the shower pipes somehow got a short circuit from the mains electricity supply.. Must admit I'm a little afraid of taking a shower now - think I might prefer to stay dirty for a while and covered in compost, earth and various small plants until somebody assures me that the shower is fixed properly!

DAY 14

******

Decided I needed a bit of break from the garden for a day so I hitched a ride to the town with 2 of the guys in one of the community's clapped out old russian jeeps. It was an interesting drive rattling along the track trying to avoid the numerous massive potholes in the road. The norwegian guy was at the wheel (his first time driving such a vehicle) and doing an admirable job at keeping the car out of the craters while trying to work the crazy gears with shouted comments from the german guy in the back, while in the front passenger seat I simply hung on to the door for dear life with one hand and what was left of the glove compartment with the other (while hurriedly mumbling the Lord's prayer).

The shock absorbers seemed to have gone some time ago and we were somewhat concerned about the suspension too, each time we hit another pothole and Steffan's head made contact with the car roof amidst swearing from the Norwegian guy as the gears slipped again and the racing of the engine drowned out the swearing coming from the backseat.

We had a laugh though, especially when, after hitting the first pothole at high speed, I grabbed behind me for the seatbelt and small bit of it that was left came completely out in my hand! Then soon after that the petrol light flashed on the dashboard but after sometime the petrol gauge was actually increasing!...we seemed to have started off with an empty tank and it slowly increased until we had nearly a full tank after a while - until we realised that the petrol gauge was actually showing the engine temperature, while the needle of the temperature gauge was missing completely!

Eventually we came to a main road. We knew it was a main road because it was twice as wide and had some tarmac on it, but the craters were still pretty frequent and cars in both directions would just move over to the other side of the road to avoid the holes and swerve back again just before the next car.

The town is 30km away and consists of many square 3 storey blocks of flats and various wooden cottages on the outskirts. In the centre there are about 15 small shops and a few cafes and a small supermarket. After getting our shopping we headed down to the riverfront where there were two old russian warships moored. We spent an hour or so exploring the ships and sitting in the sun eating icecreams.

Managed to buy a 300 rouble card to topup the credit on the community mobile phone so that I can check my email on the laptop linked to the mobile. (the landphone doesn't work here). It's great to be able to communicate again with the outside world after two weeks out here in the styx :)

DAY 15

******

Picked another big harvest of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers and also some of the new radishes. It's incredible how much more beautiful, fresh and just generally more wholesome all of the vegetables are here than back home in the supermarkets. Some of the tomatoes and radishes that we gathered were so pristine and beautifully coloured that I'd have honestly taken a photo of them if I had a camera here.

Still can't believe the amount of salad harvest we get every day...the tomato plants just never seem to stop producing more ripe fruit every day and the green/red peppers are so numerous that the plants are toppling over with the weight and we have to tie strings from the ceiling to support them!

Harvesting the cucumbers is always an interesting experience too - rather like a treasure hunt through a forest of sharp spiky leaves and vines. The cucumbers are incredibly well hidden and it's like trying to find a pin in a gorse-bush!

We harvested more than we can eat in one day, so Sarah has spent the afternoon preparing numerous large jars of pickled tomatoes and cucumbers for storage for the winter.

Was yet another hot sunny day, about +27C and got very tanned weeding the beetroot patch for the whole afternoon. It's a tricky business trying to extricate the numerous deep-rooted weeds from the soil without uprooting any of the beetroot or hidden onion plants that are amidst them. The skin of my hands is quite tough now and getting rather dry and they're permanently ingrained with soil every day so it's almost a waste of time trying to wash them anymore. Lucky I've got short nails anyway, it's definitely not work for people with long nails.

After supper I went out as usual to do some running along the country track that leads up onto the plateau behind the community. The views from there are great with a forested wilderness on one side and the fields, river and more forest in the valley on the other side. The sun was just setting above the forest on the other side of the plateau and it was one of the most awesome sunsets I have ever seen - reminded me of some kind of arctic winter-sun with a huge red orb and golden patterns running out like a pyramid to the fiery cloud formations behind.

DAY 16

******

Today the early morning was very much like a typical morning in November in England with a lot of mist and fairly chilly. But soon the mist cleared and we had a sunny morning.

I spent the whole morning helping with the construction of the new bakery which is nearly finished. The entire building is made of straw-bales (plastered in clay) and wood panelling inside. It's incredible how smart inside the house is and how it's entirely made from natural materials - no sign of any plastic and the only metal is the sinks and piping. The building has taken 2 years to construct and was almost entirely done by one Russian guy called Sasha.

After breakfast we were introduced for the first time, and my hand was clasped in a strong grip and shaken so firmly that I almost lost my footing. He is a fairly short, stocky and very strong old russian guy of about 50 years old with tanned,weathered face and tanned arms and legs amply covered by oversize shorts and an old polo shirt which was mostly covered in sawdust. Though I've not felt it necessary to describe anyone in this diary, I feel one must make an exception for Sasha. His slightly unconventional appearance and wild wacky eccentric character are so extraordinary that I need to write a few paragraphs to convey just what it was like spending a morning working with this guy..

We started by collecting timber and some ladders, hammers and roofing felt. Within a few minutes it was apparent that Sasha is completely at ease with the whole world, and indeed treats every person (and object) with the same open accepting manner. During his work he keeps up a continuous dialogue involving every object and action and at first the constant stream of exclamations mixed with expletives is a bit alarming, until you realise that he is actually completely cheerful and chilled-out the whole time.

It was a fun and very interesting morning for me watching (and helping sometimes) as Sasha nailed the roofing felt to the wooden eaves of the building while perched precariously on a ladder with felt in one hand, hammer in the other and nails spilling out the pockets. His awareness of the present moment and of what he was doing and skill at building were very impressive, and his comments and observations on everything we did (and on the world in general) were often hilariously funny! Working with him was one of the most relaxing working tasks I've ever done. He is completely unconcerned with the past or future and unhurried in everything so the work involved no stress and yet amazingly everything got done well ahead of when we expected. Definitely a strange phenomenon of time!

New german guy called Malta arrived to work here at the community. He has just got back from a month exploring lake Baikal in Eastern Russia (the same area where I went trekking a year or two ago). Also another german guy (Steffan) arrved here ealier this week along with a german girl so now there's as many German speaking people here as Russian speaking. We currently have: 4 german guys, 1 german girl, 1 armenian guy, 1 english girl, 4 russian girls,2 russian guys, 1 american guy, 9 students (and me!).

In the middle of the afternoon a huge storm of purple clouds rolled in across the wide valley and when I looked up from weeding and saw the rainbow I immediately thought "oh shit!", which was quite the right reaction as the heavens opened about 30 seconds later and we had a big rainstorm and plenty of thunder in the distance. At least we don't have to spend ages watering the plants today.

Day 17

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As it was getting dark, I headed over to the Bannia cabin in the woods where Lonya (the russian guy) had been preparing the stove there for nearly 3 hours to make the Bannia (sauna) hot enough. Inside the cabin always smells real nice, it's a kinda warm, homely smell of wood - something like the smell of sap from the cedar tree. I don't know what kind of wood they use to build the Bannias but it always smells fresh.

This week we didn't have any Kvass to throw on the stove for the 'fresh-bread smell' and we eschewed the idea of throwing tea-tree oil on again after the disastrous eye-water consequences of the last time we did it.

While we were there, a massive thunderstorm rolled in and so we sat relaxing, watching the hypnotic affect of the flames in the stove and listening to the muffled booms of thunder coming from somewhere outside the walls.

After Bannia I had a refreshing (and freezing cold) shower of water from the well and then sat outside on the veranda of the cabin for a while - watching the mist swirling and listening to the roar of the thunder in the distance. They really have strange thunderstorms here - the last three have all been without the usual torrential downpour that we get in England. It hardly rains at all, but the storm is much larger, much more impressive and lasts longer.

We walked to Dostoyevski house and sat on their veranda for hours just chatting and looking out across the large plain enveloped in darkness below us. The nightsky was clear above us and we could see many stars, but at the same time there was this huge storm on the plain in the distance and every minute the plain would be lit up be awesome flashes of lightning - way more impressive than in England!

Day 18

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Slept most of the morning and then we spent an hour cleaning the house. Weekends are very relaxed here and any activities, concerts or trips are quite spontaneous. After lunch, as it was a hot sunny day, our house decided to go out to the forest to pick blueberries for supper.

Daniel agreed to drive us in the old jeep, so we all piled in and set off for the bumpy ride a few kilometres down the track to where another track branched off and wound it's way deep into the forest. It might be exaggerating somewhat to call this second route a 'track'!...it was more like two ruts in the ground which led off haphazardly across the field and through a narrow corridor of cut trees into the forest. Even in the jeep we we getting pretty concerned as we bounced up and down over old stream beds and frequently grounded the bottom of the jeep on huge tussocks. First it was like driving through savannah, with high elephant grasses towering above us on all sides, and then as we got deep into the forest it became quite dark and entangled with thick brush on all sides. The only real light was from occasional beams of sunlight that cut through the thick foliage.

Eventually we stopped when the jeep could get no further into the forest and got out and went on foot. But first we put on every item of clothing we had to cover every inch of skin and then sprayed the clothes, face and hands liberally with mosquitoe repellant. At first I thought this was a bit over the top, but as we pushed into the thick forest I quickly discovered that the mosquitoes there are real killers! They are much larger than in England, attack you immediately and easily bite through trousers and the pants underneath too (as my arse will testify!).

The very expensive 'non chemical' mosquito repellant from the health-food shop was utterly useless against these agressive mosquitoes and my hands were bitten several times in the first few minutes. The most useful thing I  worked out was to just keep moving rapidly so they had no chance to land on you!

DAY 19

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Yesterday our head gardner Seeman left to go back to Germany after nearly a year here at Svetlana. Which means that the entire responsibility for the all the vegetable gardens here now rests entirely on the shoulder of me and Thomas. Both of us have never done gardening before and Seemans knowledge was fairly sketchy so he didn't leave us with much idea of how to go on. But anyway there's nothing like a good challenge...time to boldly go experimental where no man has experimentaled before :)

I've spent all the morning pruning the tomatoes plants in the large polytunnel. My god!-It resembles a tropical jungle in there and I had to use a machete to get through to the furthest plants! there's tomato vines everywhere stretching up over the roof above me and they're all tangled up and tomatoes are falling off or suffocating the poor pepper plants underneath it all. It's not a great job for someone with an allergy to tomatoes...but I only got a few rashes on my hands so it wasn't too bad.

This evening I had another interesting experience (to add to my CV!).. the Russian guy Lonya had to go to St Petersburg and somebody needed to feed the pigs while he was away so I ...ahem!...volunteered..ahem!

Yeah people often stereotype pigs as being particularly greedy, fat, dirty animals and, well..it's all *totally* true!! I expected that we would just heave a few buckets of kitchen compost into their pen but the process is considerably more involved and I actually had to *cook* for them, can you believe it. I mixed a load of kitchen compost with water in a huge pan and put it on the gas for an hour to cook and then heaved it into a big urn and added 6 bowls of grain and a half bucket of milk (and a pinch of salt and some spices ;) and slowly mixed it all together with what appeared to be a boat oar! then left it to settle for an hour.

When I came back the conconction looked totally rank, decidedly inedible and probably not fit for pigs! (not much different from my usual cooking then). It resembled some kinda porridge that had gone horrible wrong and every now and then large chunks of partially decomposed vegetable or egg-shell would float to the surface. Didn't smell too bad though...few more bits of fruit and a bit of custard and I'd probably eat it if I had to live on my own too long :)

First I went into the far pen and as I approached the pigs erupted in a melee of wild grunting and they were actually drooling in anticipation and tripping over each other to get to the trough. In the pen was the big fat mama (who was about 6 ft long and probably weighed around 250kilos and also her 11 little piglets who were all falling over each other in the trough and presenting me with some difficulty about how to throw the bucket of food in without plastering the pigs. After several minutes of handywork laying about me with the broom, I cleared a path and heaved the huge bucket of food (aka pig-swill) into the trough and legged it as fast I could before the stamped to the trough began!

Next I fed the big daddy pig who had his own pen and was equal in size to the female, but he had (mean looking)tusks and was considerably more docile and chilled-out about the whole feeding process. After he had slurped up his food, I took Lonya's advice and scratched his back with a hard-bristled broom (the pig that is, not Lonya), and you should have seen the huge soppy grin and contented look on his face after a few minutes of rubbing his back with the broom...he was practically purring!

Afterwards I wheeled another large barrel of pig-swill...ahem!...I mean of my gourmet cooking, to the other 4 adult female pigs who were out in the field. And again I was greeted with massive enthusiasm and all the females were falling over each other in their haste to come and see what I was upto (wouldn't it be nice if human females were also so ...ahem).

Trying to ladle the pig's food through the narrow gap into the trough was quite a task and I got liberally plastered in copious amounts of A' La Carte Veg&porridge with a side-dressing of sour milk. The whole task took nearly an hour and I felt pretty knackered after it. But was fascinating watching the pigs and I'm glad that I don't eat my food like that!

Day 20

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Rained again last night and also most of the morning. Looks like the suntanning weather has gone. Must look on the bright side though - at least I don't have to spend an hour and a half watering the plants every day now.

Went running again in the evening along the forest track and saw some of the most incredible imagery I've every seen! As I arrived up on the small plateau I could see the sun setting in a shimmering array of gold and red rays just above the black silouette of the forest and the field below was blanketted in swirling ground mist about ten feet high, through which the setting sun was shining. The whole world was totally still and there was no sound at all, it was such a surreal image that it almost seemed like it was computer generated or something. I just stood there mesmerized for ages as the mist shifted about and the sun slowly descended behind the black forest.

As I jogged back through the fields with the sunset behind me, I noticed that the view in front was completely different. Like an English wintry scene with everything in hues of gray and the mist partially obscuring the trees and fields and creating an eery, forbidding atmosphere in the dead silence.

Day 21

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Feeling pretty tired and wiped-out this morning. Hardly got any sleep last night 'cos one of our students (he's a new boy, about 17 years old) went a bit nuts during the evening and ate a lot of food from the larder including sugar, which he mustn't eat and then his behaviour got real bad and his stomach got pretty sick too. Somehow he has the ability to control being sick, so that he can wait until the most inconvenient moment and then when we refuse to do what he wants he just grins evilly and pukes all over the carpet, stairs, one's feet or wherever he wants. It took us 3 hours to convince him to go to bed and stop messing around. During that period he managed to be sick about fifteen times and god only knows how he had enough food inside him to keep doing it!

DAY 22

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Definitely turning into autumn here already, not had any days of suntanning for a week already and mornings are usually misty until about 10am. We realised today that we forgot to pick the french beans for a while and now there are masses of them and they're pretty damn large so we took one of the students (Vasya) and spent most of the morning picking beans. It's pretty laborious back-breaking work and takes ages to pick the 7 rows of beans. But now we have picked enough to have beans for breakfast, lunch and supper for 2 days!

Oh yeah, and the bad news - those B@#~%*!^&ing geese!! - they found there way into the vegetable garden again last night and ate a chunk out of every single cabbage and half of the radishes! So now we must harvest all the remaining cabbages today...looks like being cabbage soup every meal for the next 3 days <AAAGH!>. Luckily we have another crop of cabbages that are a later variety that will be ready in a week or so.

Well, when I find those damn geese there's gonna be a lot of shouting, a lot of feathers and a quick trip to the butchers! (just kidding). All we could do to fix the problem was put up some more makeshift fences and strings around the garden. Hmm..but what we really need is a few landmines! (Bl#^*%dy geese, Grrr...mutter...mumble).

After lunch today I grabbed some bags and went with the russian coworker (Lonya) over the fields to the surrounding forest to gather mushrooms. (it's a very solid russian tradition that almost everyone in russia does every autumn and then they pickle the mushrooms for the winter).

Crossing the plateau to the forest was quite an experience as it is completely wild and covered in very high elephant grasses about 6ft high so it really felt like we were trekking through the savannah in Africa (was really hoping that there were no snakes in the tall dry grasses!).

Eventually we made it to the forest edge and were met by an almost impenetrable wall of pine trees, silver birch and various other trees. Through the dense foliage we could see a dark and rather forbidding murkiness and everywhere was totally silent and no wind. It felt strange.

After skirting the forest edge for a while we still hadn't found an 'entrance' so we just dived in and pushed out way through the dense brush on hands and knees until we came to a clearing and from there on the forest opened out quite a bit but it was still difficult to navigate through with dead fallen trees everywhere, small pine trees and dense foliage with a hidden stream or bog every now and then.

As we went deeper there were more pine trees and less foliage and it became darker with occasional shafts of sunlight piercing down to light the small clearings. The ground between the trees was very soft and covered completely in a bright green moss and hidden amongst the mosses were an amazing array of different types of red and white spotted mushrooms and brown and black toadstools. It was a bit like a forest from a Grimm's fairytale, and I half expected a gnome or a fairy to jump out at any minute.

With hindsight we realised that we weren't really the best people to be out searching for mushrooms as I'd never seen these varieties before and Lonya had been just once with his mum and could only remember 2 types which were safe to eat (out of about 15 types that we found there). Unfortunately those 2 types appeared to be about as rare as finding a peach tree or something. After 2 hours of searching we only found 5 mushrooms!...true, they were very beautiful mushrooms, with red caps and white spots. But not really enough to cook for supper for 30 people.

When we got tired of meandering through the forest, we spent another hour feeling a bit lost trying to get out of the forest again and eventually found our way back to the 'savannah' of tall grasses, where the sun was shining brightly and it was so hot we stripped to the waist. At the far end of the plateau we fell into a small ravine (dry streambed) which we followed almost to the road and can you believe our luck!!!...after 3 hours searching for mushrooms far into the forest, we found about 50 of them in that small ravine near the road back at the community!

DAY 23

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It's my last day here! and it's sunday so I'm just gonna relax and try and take a load of photos with the digital camera that Irina has lent me for the day.

Tomorrow at 6.30am I'll brave the rickety old jeep again for another bumpy ride along the tracks to the nearest town (Syestroy) where the train line starts and at 7am every day there is a local train that goes from there to St Petersburg (3 hours away).

I'm not going to be leaving Thomas alone to manage the whole vegetable garden though, because today 2 new coworkers arrived who have come to be here for a year. One is a german girl and the other is swedish and in a weeks time an english girl will also come and then Thomas will be leaving too. In just two weeks the community will change from being almost entirely male coworkers to being almost entirely female coworkers :)