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One week in Вязье …

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We left St Pete in Richards car at 6am sharp for my village adventure though one of these random police checks delayed us a little (with no reward for our early morning friends from the Russian police this time). On our way down south we dropped by one of the other group farms – what a difference to Issad! Really back in time and a lot of work ahead to get this one modernised.

By lunchtime we were sat in the вязье’s village Stalovaya (well, really it runs only when farm business requires it) with the local manager Anton. Richard went straight into business. I accepted for now that Anton deemed me a dutch guy (there are plenty of them active in Russia). The farm setup there is distinctly from issad and much more decentral. Long ways … I think i did 20km a day. After a look around the farm with Richard and Sergey it was time to move into mu new home in one of the concrete blocks in Issad. Nicely refurbished inside though pretty dated outside. After shopping I got my last blog done and followed chelsea winning 6:0 in their champions league opener against some aseri team I have never heard of.



Village life was quiet at best. Kids have not much to do apart from some run down playgrounds. Not surprising to see them picking up bad habits early. Some little school boys (10-12?) asked me (demanded?) for cigarettes. You can see them already arriving with a fag at school – and it’s a school for younger kids only. Time really stands still here. Demographics stink. You seemingly only meet older or younger people. 20-30s much less it feel. They have left. Big issue for recruiting farm workers. Seemingly even bigger than in issad. But then also completely understandable given tough job markets locally.

Farm work was not overly busy that week. Animals I noticed look generally cleaner given they are chained and hence their rear is always facing the right way (to the shitpusher or how ever you want to call these devices). Downside obviously is a much more constrained life. I inspected some equipment for functionality (e.g. Pulsator) and cleanliness (milking & feeding gear), scored cows for body condition (handy app there from Bayer … no limits for mobile phone use these days) and some of the operating procedures and execution of the farm workers (e.g. How well tits are sealed after milking etc). The other main job was to organise the upcoming blogger visit to issad with some microinfluencers sponsored by Danone – chiefly to write the presentation.
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Loads of downtime. On top of the generally quiet place (not cafe, restraurnat, bar etc) I also didn’t feel too great myself -0with a sore throat nagging that basically grounded me even if there was something to do. On the flip side, I got through two books (detective novels of inspector maigret) and plenty of rest. Saturday I still felt bad, but used the time to do some planning for Spain and Colombia in fall as well as Thailand in January. Big world from my screen in little issad! The exceptions was Saturday evening. I had heard that there was a youth club in the village and finally decided that I can’t miss the only ‘party’ Vance in the village. It felt strange to walk into this place of strangers without knowing anyone, but turned out friendly be it a bit boring. Illuminated dance floor without dancers (only drink Igor sleeping on the floor), music not working (I fetched my boombox) and a generally pretty young and drunk crowd. But it was fun to chat and engage in yet another round of arm wrestling ;o) I lost after a long struggle to what seemed the local champion.

Back to issad. Sergey kindly gave me a lift Sunday morning to dedovice some 15km away me with a train service to st pete on Sundays. He is from the region and showed me around a bit to say the local power station, wood manufacturing plant etc. Right on time at 10.30 the train arrived and I made myself comfortable on the bed in my cabin. Love this way of travelling. More reading. Little conversation. Once in st Pete I met with Richard and together with kirill we headed for issad. Much prep was still to do ahead of the Danone event including fair bit of cleaning. Home sweet home again … for two more weeks.

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