Harvest 2015: harvesting Granny Katsja’s potatoes, Tsjerablichy 2015. Ураджай 2015 г.: збор бульбы для бабы Каці, Цераблічы 2015 г.
Granny Katsja can move only with the help of two walking sticks, so relatives and neighbors gathered to harvest the potato crop from her home plot. Harvesting potatoes is always back-breaking work in the heat and digging through sandy soil that covers one in grit; this year it was especially dusty owing to the lack of rain for most of the summer.
The potato is central to the Belarusian diet, and everyone thanked God that this year’s crop was “normal” as the smallholder farmers of Tsjerablichy — speaking like farmers everywhere else — cautiously described it.
Family plots are too small to use tractors, so the men use a horse and plow to open up the furrows.
Granny Katsja (in the rear on the right) looks on as women fill bags.
Harvesters sort potatoes as they gather them: small ones for feed and seed, larger ones for food.
The men carry the 40-kilo (90-pound) bags from the field to the root cellar.
Wow, 90 pounds at a time? Sheesh, I thought 30 pound bags of compost were heavy! I love your writing, Dad!
Thanks, Ceci!