Cycle of the year: plowing the potato patch. Varsyn’ 2018.
The potato is central to the Belarusian diet and, with periods of war, deprivation and destruction seared into the nation’s memory, to maintaining village household reserves of food.
Many household plots and plots arbitrarily allocated by the local collective farm are too small to make plowing by tractor feasible unless families with adjacent allotments have access to a collective-farm tractor. Horse-drawn plowing thus remains widespread, although — as shown below — small-scale mechanized tilling for other crops is slowly coming into more widespread use, at least in more prosperous rural areas.
Кола года: араньне на пасадку бульбы. Варсынь 2018 г.
Cleaning the plow. Varsyn’ 2018.
Чыстка плуга. Варсынь 2018 г.
Tilling the household plot. Azdamichy 2018.
This gentleman from the Azdamichy church choir has seen me for years photographing the major feasts. When I stopped to photograph his neat-as-a-pin preparations for planting, he called the kids from the next-door hothouse to have their photo taken.
Апрацоўка агароду. Аздамічы 2018 г.
Дзед з прыходнага хору ў Аздамічах мяне ведае ўжо шмат гадоў і калі мяне пазнаў выклікаў дзяцей з суседняга парніку на партрэт.
