Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in Russia's Countryside

4. Natural Foods: Feeding the Body and Nourishing the Soul

74 chapter 4 Natural Foods Feeding the Body and Nourishing the Soul Our short summer has many magnificent gifts; one of these is the blueberry. If you want good health for yourself, you should eat plenty of blueberries and not forget about their relatives. . . . All of the substances of this berry are so harmonically mixed that they are a real holiday for the [human] organism when they are eaten. —(Markova 2005:6) In early August 2005, the passage above introduced an article about the social history of the blueberry in Russian life in Tver Life, a daily newspaper for the city of Tver. Combining romantic descriptions with practical information, the article focused primarily on the healthful attributes of blueberries: they improve vision, especially for drivers and people who sit at computers, lower blood sugar for diabetics, ease the pains of rheumatism , possess antiseptic qualities, and facilitate recovery from eczema and burns. The author concluded by writing that “in these days, the blueberry is at its ripest, although it is already starting to peak. But at the same time, raspberries are starting to ripen in the forests. Their harvest now is very good and brings pleasure not only to people, but also to the forest” (Markova 2005:6). In midsummer in the Tver region, as in many parts of Russia, blueberries are the currency of daily life. Although berries are not generally sold in local stores, they are nonetheless widely available and strikingly visible throughout the city. Aside from a few mosquito bites and the minimal cost of a train ticket, berry picking is a relatively inexpensive activity, especially for retirees with few demands on their time. Consequently, it is not uncommon for local residents to hop on the train for a quick trip to the Natural Foods | 75 nearby forest and fill their baskets with several kilograms of berries, both for personal use and for financial gain. So reliable are the berries—and the pickers—that in Tver it is possible to set one’s watch and calendar by them: at three o’clock on summer afternoons, the city’s previously empty street corners are suddenly packed with enterprising pensioners who have spent the morning picking blueberries and have just arrived on the afternoon train from outlying areas to sell them by the cup.1 Blueberries are in such abundance that visits to friends’ houses invariably result in the visitor being coerced into eating multiple blueberry pastries and taking home a sack (or more) of fresh berries. As the article in Tver Life suggests, and as my own experiences in Russia confirm, these rituals happen again and again throughout the summer as each type of berry—raspberries, lingonberries, cranberries, and blackberries—comes into season. In light of these summer activities, it certainly seems as if Russia has a national obsession with berries. Casual conversations with acquaintances and strangers alike frequently segue into competitive accountings of how many berries have been gathered, their healthful properties, and whose ailments have been cured. Zinaida, the eighty-year-old dachnik whose family history at the dacha was documented in the black-and-white photographs figure 7. Veteran berry pickers compare containers filled with fresh blueberries. 76 | Natural Foods described previously, had this to say about a friend of hers who gathers berries for both personal health reasons and for commercial profit: “[My friend] is a completely sick person when it comes to cranberries. She says that it is intoxicating! She takes her vacation especially for cranberries and [spends] a month in the bogs . . . so that she can collect cranberries.” What are originally intended to be quick walks through the woods stretch into languid strolls as people stop to nibble along the way, a practice that several acquaintances described as the Russian version of eating “on the go” (po dorozhke). Berry bushes turn into social settings as friends and neighbors who rarely see each other in the city during the rest of the year run into each other unexpectedly in the forest and then catch up while picking. Outsiders who have never experienced the thrill of berry picking Russian-style are quickly initiated with the presentation of a pair of rubber boots, a wicker basket, and a laugh at the swarms of hungry mosquitoes that quickly descend on pickers. The intensity with which Russians pursue berry picking is perhaps matched only by their ardor for mushroom picking. As soon as...