Russians do not bend: They found themselves in the village and do not want to return

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The second reason is that if there is no money, no work, you have to somehow earn money, somehow look for work. And if it is not there? It's much easier in the village. There is a vegetable garden here, you can plant potatoes, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, you can plant and grow everything yourself.

And, in principle, you can make money here: now in our village they accept burdock root, the price is small - 20 rubles per kilogram. You can collect metal - for example, iron. I have a metal detector. Of course, the price is also not very high - only four rubles per kilogram. In the city - ten rubles, but here - four. You can still survive. You don't have to pay for an apartment here, here is your own house.

And the third reason - I think the most important - is the parents. Every summer, in any case, I have to come to the village and help them. Somewhere, something needs to be sawed, repaired, brought in, taken away, and so on. There is a lot of work here: planting a vegetable garden, knocking out potatoes, weeding the beds, peeling dry grass.

Constantly on the move - it's even better than in the city, because lately I've just been sitting in the city. Work [physical], of course, does not concern me - a loader, a finisher, a salesman - in no way. I write music to order, do creative work, work via the Internet, and it makes no difference to me whether I sit in the city or in the countryside.

Here the Internet is also present, the only speed limit is only 3G. Although, they say, there is already 4G, you need to change the modem, and everything will be fine. My parents are separate in my house, and I have a summer kitchen, I am there.

5,000 rubles can be earned in the village for five hours of collecting cedar cones

I think the village is much better.

Firstly, it is fresh air - there are always exhaust gases in the city, this vanity, someone is constantly in a hurry somewhere. Everything is in motion, accidents, knocking people down … In fact, there are many unfavorable circumstances for me. In the village I am much better and calmer, I grew up and was born here. That year there was a good harvest of cedar cones, we earned everything well, the whole village was earning a lot of money.

Now I'm doing housework: somewhere I'll go dig for iron, somewhere - burdock root. Now Ivan-tea will soon grow - this is such a herb, fireweed, it is also accepted here. Then, after Ivan tea, blueberries will go. It runs almost until September, you can collect it and earn good money, four to five thousand a day.

It's like a day - roughly speaking, you don't have to work all day, only from nine to two, and I earn four to five thousand freely.

I am not obliged to anyone, to any bosses, I should not bend under anyone, going to work every morning is not for me. In addition, as I said, I write music to order, I am quite comfortable, and everything suits me here.

Here I have streams around, here I fish, I catch daces. I went, threw a fishing rod or a korchaga - this is such a tackle-trap for fish, the next morning I checked it - there are 70-80 daces. I fried and smoked. There are no problems with food here, I eat here no worse than in the city, even, I would say, better, because it is clean here - my own products, my own potatoes, even if not, you can buy them in the village without any problems. You can take pickles, and sauerkraut from someone, and canned cucumbers.

When I come here from the city, my soul is really happy, and I want to live, and the mood is good. Moreover, this year May is sunny and hot, it has never happened before. Poplar fluff is now, of course, a little tortured. As in the songs of "Ivanushki", only in May.

Here is the pond where I fish. Well, like a pond - here the water runs numb, and here the fish is. Soon I will be plowing a vegetable garden, it is small, but in principle it is enough. Well, the tractor will come, plow everything up, it will be fine. Of course, the house is already old, it needs renovation, but it is still holding on. It will be necessary to make repairs this year. Every autumn we order birch firewood, two cars for six thousand rubles.

In the house I do creative work, a microphone here, a computer, a studio monitor. There is a small stove that heats well: he threw an armful of firewood - and the heat is hot. But now it's hot outside, and you don't even need to heat it. We take water from a well - normal clean water. He is nearby, you don't need to carry anything anywhere, I carry it every day.

Life here is somehow more truthful and simpler

I worked in the branch of the OGTRK as a director of special projects. In addition, I participated as a director in various media projects and in my free time made documentaries on topics of interest to me. He lived in a fairly tight schedule.

After thinking a little, I decided to move to the village.

Life in the countryside destroyed one stereotype for me: that there are a lot of drunks here. I saw one, he often stands near the store and begs for money for a check, and that's all. The rest all work.

Somehow I went out for a walk - in April, just when the self-isolation regime was announced - and did not meet a single person. I went to the neighbors, I ask: where is everyone? They tell me: how where - in the garden, the earth came up, they dig it up, and you take a shovel and dig. Well, I went, took a shovel and dug up the whole garden in a couple of days.

In general, the self-isolation regime did not greatly unsettle the villagers, they both were engaged in vegetable gardens and continue to be engaged. Contacting each other over the fence, shouting about how they are doing, and all the latest news. Here everyone is constantly busy with something: work at work, work in the garden, rest after work in the same garden. There is no place for loafers here, a loafer simply will not survive here.

I understand that not all villages have gas, enterprises, shops, but all villages have land, and if a person wants to live well, comfortably and do not need anything, then he can provide this, even without a job, but having just a piece of land. There would be a head and there would be a desire.

And in the village it is not customary to whine that there is no work, everything is expensive, and you can't buy anything at all. There is a standard folk remedy for all this - physical labor. The one who works and thinks with his head will achieve everything and certainly will not be poor, will be well-fed, and his family and children will be the same. Therefore, if there is a head, there are hands, there is a desire to work - everything else will be there.

Having lived for over 20 years in a large city, I faced a number of everyday problems. Everything in order. The first difficulty I encountered when I moved from a city apartment to a private country house was heating. Although it was gas, the boiler that stood here had only two positions: on and off. You turn it on, and it starts heating so that it becomes like in a bathhouse, and you just had to turn it off. I have such an alignment, of course

however, did not suit, and I decided to replace the boiler with a more modern one. After I did this, I set the right temperature - comfortable for myself and for living - and lived quietly. The winter passed without incident. And according to the bills, heating in a city apartment was about twice as expensive as heating in a private village house. Of course, this is a big plus.

All the conveniences I have, and practically all the inhabitants of the village, are in the house. Water is supplied to the house from a well dug on the site using a pump installed in the basement. In common people they call him crazy - I don't know why.

Now, I think we can talk about leisure and entertainment. They are radically different from urban ones. The village has no bars, no restaurants, no bowling alleys with billiards, no cinemas, no shopping malls, or anything else.

But there are much more interesting things here. These are long walks or horseback riding, cycling, swimming in the river, hunting, fishing, you can go to the forest for mushrooms. In winter, you can go skiing, ice skating or sledding without getting too far from home. In general, it is much healthier and healthier. As for leisure at home, here I have satellite TV and the Internet. Of course, he is not as smart as in the city, but you can watch something online. Not much different from the city.

For nothing or for a conditional fee, they feed it with milk, then with eggs, then with salts

Dmitry moved to the village after 20 years of living in a million-plus city

Now about the cons. There are no hospitals, pharmacies or dentistry in the village. For these services, if something suddenly happens, you have to go to the regional center, since the bus runs every hour, and it is not so far to go. Also, there is no hairdresser, to get a haircut in the regional center. On the plus side, there is a kindergarten, primary and secondary school. There is no need to go skiing through the forest through the snowdrifts.

In terms of employment, the village has a large developing farm that provides jobs for half of the residents. Those who do not work are fed by their subsidiary farm. If you have hands and a head, then a person lives quite comfortably and well-fed: after all, he can have chickens, and geese, and ducks, cows, goats, pigs, and on this - butter, milk, eggs and everything else. Again, this can be done for yourself, and for sale, and for stocks.

Therefore, if a person wants to live comfortably, then it is not difficult to do this in the village, the main thing is to work, and then everything will be fine. And if such a person is asked where he works, he can safely answer: “How where? At home."

I also started a small vegetable garden, planted some tomatoes, carrots, peppers, radishes, herbs, but this, of course, will not feed me - so, a hobby, nothing more. But do I need something to eat? And what to eat? That's right, for money.

And where to get them? That's right, make money. To earn money, I periodically run to the same million-plus city from which I moved, and participate there as a director or someone else in various media projects. I come back here, and where to buy food - there is no problem with that. There are several grocery stores and one supermarket of a large well-known chain.

That, in fact, is all. But besides this, I know all the neighbors, as I said, and they are professional gardeners, gardeners and business executives with a capital letter. And they feed me, either for nothing or for a conditional fee, with milk, with eggs, or salmon - in general, I will not be lost here. There are also food markets that are held on Saturdays, that is, Saturday is market day. I came to the bazaar, bought myself just for a week - and that's it, there would be money.

Having lived 20 years in the city and only a few months in the countryside, I will probably stay here for the next few years, and maybe even decades.

Life here is somehow more truthful and simpler, there are no far-fetched problems and everything else that surrounded me when I lived and worked in the city. Sometimes my friends call me and ask how are you, is everything okay, we have a nice conversation, and then they start complaining about life, about problems at work. I interrupt them unceremoniously: that's enough, I need to dig a hole, come tomorrow, take a shovel and dig. And you know what? They come, dig, and then thank. And the problems no longer seem insoluble.

Since I settled here, I realized that physical labor is a cure for many physical and moral problems. People here do not go in for fitness, do not run, do not go to rocking chairs, but they look great, because they acquire muscles, strength and endurance by working on their site. It's simple. And they do not pay money for this, but on the contrary - they even earn and provide themselves with everything tasty. In general, physical labor is great.

In the village, after a productive day, you can go out into the courtyard, light a fire, sit and be silent, think about the past day. In the city I missed it terribly.

If you remember my childhood, then when I came here for the holidays, of course, I liked it here. But as I grew up, when I, as a teenager, lived in the village and watched various films and TV series, they showed successful young people who live in Moscow and other megacities. I liked it so much, I also wanted to quickly leave the village, go to college, unlearn and build a career, become successful, drive a car at night, go to clubs, to bars - in short, this whole movement really admired me. What I've done?

After school, I really moved to a metropolis, unlearned, began to build a career. Somewhere it didn’t work - I changed industries, professions, because it’s impossible to become successful right away, for this you need to put in a lot of effort. In the end, everything worked out for me, but when it worked out, I was again drawn to the village. I don't even know how to explain it.

The city is not the best place for the development of children

Natalia:In my opinion, we did not have a conscious decision, we made it a little spontaneously, that is, we did not think about how we would live here, what we would live on here. We had a house that we built as a summer cottage, which was not ready for winter living, but then we had to redo it.

We had a small plot with a house, and, in fact, there was a desire to just move and live outside the city, because at some point we realized that we are people of movement, and we do not have enough space, some kind of activity in the city.

You move very little in the city - apartment, work, house. Groundhog day. Here, one might say, is also groundhog day, but here there is more movement and more space, the eye does not stumble upon multi-storey buildings. At some point, the soul demanded more space and silence, so we decided to leave the city for the village.

Artem: The decision was made in the literal sense of the word spontaneously, I would even say, rashly. Four years later, it was already the fifth, I can admit: we did not think at all about how we would live here, how to earn money, and all these problems had to be solved in the course of life. There were a lot of them.

Natalia: It was her husband's decision to move to the countryside from the city. I am afraid of everything, it is difficult for me to change something, it is difficult to change a measured life for something unknown. But since my husband is the head of the family, I followed him, completely trusted his decision, and we went here. In general, the move was great for me: I was on maternity leave with a small child, and there was nowhere to go for a walk in the city - to get to the nearest park, you need to cross five very busy roads, respectively, to breathe in the exhaust gases, with a small child in a stroller - that's all for me it was very annoying.

When we arrived here, it was spring, everything was blooming, green grass, flowers, wonderful smells - I felt very good: at last I was with a small child in the fresh air, there was a lot of movement, we took horses from the city and transported them here. There was a big problem that had to be solved: the children were in ninth grade, and it was necessary to make a decision whether to transfer them to another school or still stay where we studied.

We decided to stay at the city school, and the problem was to take the children to school every day. It was very difficult, because the city is 60 kilometers from us. This was the only problem.

Artem: From my male point of view, the move was hard for me morally: in a very short period of time I had to study a lot of information, because winter was coming fast enough, we had a summer house, and we had to take care of the insulation of the water supply system and heating the house. We already had animals, but then there was no equipment yet, and we had to think about where to buy hay and the like. These problems had to be solved very quickly, while I was still working then.

We are located in the Vladimir region, Kolchuginsky district. The downside here is that the lights are often turned off. In most cases, this is due to snowfalls. Honestly, it’s uncomfortable, but now we get out of the situation quite easily: we bought a gas generator, it saves us. We have wood heating, and we don't bother about this.

Natalia: When they say "village life", "village conditions", they always imagine that the toilet is on the street, water from a well, and every day to rake out a bunch of manure. A pile of manure, of course, is present, but as for the toilet, shower and everything else, our conditions do not differ from urban ones.

Moreover, we do not have a centralized water supply system, my husband is a wonderful person, he arranged all the conditions autonomous, like in a city, only in a village. We have an autonomous sewerage system, like in a city, an autonomous water supply system - water from a well is supplied home and there it is heated by water heaters. The heating is also its own - wood-burning, the stove is wonderful.

In our village there is no gas, no running water, the only dependence on the city is electricity, which, as Artem said, is sometimes turned off. But Artem found a solution to this question too. And so we have all the conditions - as in the city, there is nothing wrong with the village life.

Artem: Making money in the countryside is a very serious question, because on our channel, where we show our life in the countryside, almost every tenth person writes: they also want to move, but the first question is earnings. Everyone understands perfectly well that the Union has collapsed, there are no collective farms as such, and this stops many.

Natalia: In fact, making money in the village is not easy, and if I were alone, I don’t know how I would do it. As Artem says, I am a good performer, but I do not know how to organize my own production.

It is quite difficult to compete with Pyaterochka and Magnets.

Natalia about trying to make money in agriculture

Artem: Most people, when moving to a village, for some reason, the first thing they want to do is get some animals and make money on them. They, you know, how under the Soviet Union they associate: "We say - Lenin, we mean - the party", the village means to breed cattle. In fact, in my opinion, this is a mistake, because keeping livestock is a very expensive pleasure. Every year feeds are becoming more expensive, hay is becoming more expensive, and prices for the same meat, at least in stores, are falling.

Of course, someone can argue with me on this topic, this is my personal, subjective opinion. But in the village there are types of earnings in which you will work less, but earn more, and even if you take the experience of people who were born and raised here, most, unfortunately, do not keep cattle, they keep only to feed their families.

Most are engaged in some kind of small business: someone has a sawmill, someone has paving slabs, and the like. As for us, for a very long time I wandered from corner to corner, how to earn money, I studied supply and demand.

As a result, we acquired a CNC milling machine that makes all kinds of pieces of wood, from, say, packaging to icons in 3D. There is a demand for it, but not to say that it is big: there is enough for life here, we do not complain.

Natalia: For the sake of fairness, I want to say that we were no exception, did not differ from those who want to move, and also initially followed the path of agriculture. We had plans to earn money on chickens, eggs, honey.

We started building a large poultry house, but later froze it, because, having held the chickens, we realized that it was quite difficult to compete with Pyaterochka and Magnit. Fodder is becoming more expensive - accordingly, we have moved away from the idea of making money in agriculture.

Artem: If, nevertheless, someone wants to earn money in agriculture, then, based on our experience, I would single out two areas of earnings that will generate income: honey and lamb. The rest, in our opinion, is not particularly profitable.

Leisure is one of the most popular questions about life in the countryside, because many people are interested in leisure. My answer is this: we have worked in aviation all our adult life, and there was a lot of leisure in our life. When we were on the "relay races" - they waited for the return flight, had a lot of rest in their lives. To be objective, there is no leisure as such in the countryside.

Natalia: It is important to understand what is considered as leisure here, because reading a book is also leisure, and there is much more time to do it. It’s a lot of time to master some hobby, which, for example, you have wanted for a long time, but you didn’t have time because of work.

For example, I do not know how to do anything with my hands, and here I am trying to learn how to knit, sew, make dishes from clay. This is also leisure, in my personal opinion. I don’t understand when people say: “You shut yourself up, buried yourself in the village, there are no cinemas, theaters and everything else there.” Sorry, we can get into the car, go to the city, go to the cinema, restaurant, cafe.

Everything is limited only by time and money. Here, in principle, both can be found. And I doubt that those who live in cities go to cafes, cinemas and theaters every day. They are chosen when there is time and money, but we do the same.

Artem: Considering that the cinema is located in the city 40 minutes away from us, I think that city dwellers spend about the same time in traffic jams, in the subway, to get to the same leisure time.

Relations with neighbors are, in my opinion, the most curious question, it is quite insidious.

When people come to rest, they are faced with the fact that a rooster or hen starts yelling at five in the morning, and they are very unhappy with this.

Artem about relations with city-dwellers

Natalia: In the city, we often do not know who lives in the neighborhood, do not know each other. And here is a big village, the houses seem to be far from each other, but everyone knows each other. Here, all people are in closer contact than in the city.

Artem: In our village, most of the lands have the status of personal subsidiary plots. It so happened that when the Union collapsed, many villagers left to live and work in the city, and during the same period of time, many city dwellers bought or built houses here. Because of this, sometimes conflicts arise about the same living creatures: when people come to rest, they are faced with the fact that a rooster or a chicken starts yelling at five in the morning, and are very unhappy with this.

When haymaking starts, you start the tractor at four or five in the morning, and because of this, discontent also begins. It's hard to explain this to people. We try to explain that there is SNT (horticultural non-profit partnership) for recreation, but this creates a misunderstanding. Fortunately, the percentage of such people is small, the majority, on the contrary, are loyal and understand everything.

Moreover, we keep horses, goats, rams, we kept geese, piglets, and many parents with children come to us like to a petting zoo - to pet, to look. With most of the neighbors, no questions arise. Local residents, who are living out their days in the village, share our point of view that newcomers, city residents are in the wrong environment.

Natalia: There are very few native villagers left here, but when we arrived they received us very well. Probably due to the fact that I have a grandmother from here, and half of the village, our relatives are distant and not so much. They helped us with the bees, gave advice, resorted to when something did not work out for us.

Artem, too, if someone got stuck somewhere, he drove to pull out without any problems. Mutual assistance in the village is very well developed, relations with everyone are good, but there is a misunderstanding when city people come: they do not have enough greenery, they plant flower trees even outside their area, and I need to go with goats to graze, but the goats do not understand, that these are flowers, for them everything is grass, and they believe that they can eat it.

We had a lot of controversy about this, but now, four years later, people have understood everything, and when they plant something outside their area, they enclose it with a net. Now there are no problems with anyone, very good relations with everyone.

Artem: We are friends with many summer residents, many leave us the keys to their houses, you never know what happens in winter in order to react quickly. When everyone comes in the spring, the first and only question is: "Well, how are you doing?" At first we said that we had a great life, it was the first or second year. And now we do not even understand this [question], because I have my own heating - I did as much as I wanted, but in the city you are freezing and cannot add more.

If you take our house - this is a two-level apartment, completely autonomous, automated, everything is great. However, for most people, this still causes misunderstanding, because the lack of civilization, as I understand it, still puts pressure on people's brains.

Natalia: It's hard for me to judge what city people think of us, but judging by the remarks they make in our direction, some believe that we buried ourselves in the village: "Isn't it too early for you to bury yourself in the village?" And there was another remark: "They did not achieve anything in the city, so we left for the village."

Artem: I still did not understand what we had to achieve. Let's say we earned an apartment in the city, we have it, no one has sold it. We built a house. Take our youngest daughter - she is already five years old, and you will not believe, we are simply happy for our Dasha. The child is not sick there are no allergies, he has been drinking goat's milk since childhood, constantly in the fresh air, a lot of movement and self-development games.

I do not want to offend city children, but when summer residents come, the difference in the development of a five-year-old child of a city and ours is already visible. Agree, most children now play on the tablet, watch some incomprehensible cartoons on YouTube, but here the child develops himself, and his logic works better.

Natalia: I would say that the difference is not so much in the child's intellectual development as in his independence. Here the child is more independent: she knows what to do, how to do it, where to go, why to go. She recently went to the store herself for bread, expressed a desire. She herself can feed goats, chickens and knows perfectly well whom to feed with, from the age of three.

Artem: At the end of the year, circumstances turned out so that my wife had to go to the city for a week on business, took Dasha with her, and our child did not understand for a long time why she could not open the door and go for a walk.

Natalia: Such was the case - she got dressed and said: "Mom, I went for a walk." I say that one cannot be alone. She: "Why?" That is, it was wild for her that she could not go outside in the city. In the village, she calmly opens the door and walks on the street alone. It was just a shock for her.

My goal was to show that you can live in a village no worse than in a city, and in some cases even better.

Natalia tries to raise a Russian village

Artem: I would like to add why we started a YouTube channel. We wanted to convey to people the way of life, some solutions and the like. There are a number of videos on the channel that greatly help out people who live in the country in the summer. For example, about pumping a well. I have invented an interesting way, but many are faced with the fact that the well is silted up.

I made a little know-how in the chicken coop when we kept the chickens, because the coop is small and it was necessary to optimize everything. I wanted to develop the channel on this very topic. However, when we started releasing videos, people began to write to us: guys, shoot everything, we are children of asphalt, we want to see a different life! In most cases, you have to film everyday life.

Natalia: Personally, I had a different goal: it hurts me to look at abandoned village houses. A grandmother or a grandfather is dying, and their children and grandchildren have no idea that it is possible to come here and establish some kind of life here, and they abandon these houses. At best they sell, at worst they just give up.

I, too, at one time did not imagine that one can live in a village in comfortable conditions, and my goal was to show that one can live in a village no worse than in a city, and in some cases even better. For people to understand this and start returning from cities, after all, the city is not the best place for the development of children, for life.

Artem: Decide for yourself whether it is worth moving to the village or not, but to be honest, we do not regret it and make big plans.