Late summer and early fall are filled with harvesting
- here family members help my friend Marika harvest potatoes...
And I join in as well:
Throughout my visits to Zakarpattja, I have been fascinated by the social and cultural importance of work in everyday life. Migrant labor has been a source of income for Zakarpattja families for generations. In pre-Soviet days, workers migrated to Canada and the US; during the Soviet period workers traveled to the Baltic states or Siberia; and since the opening of Ukraine's borders, many villagers work for part of the year in Central or Western Europe, or Russia. Back at home, small-scale farming supplements the food that the dollars people bring home from their work abroad buys. Many of the men who don't go abroad earn money helping out on farms: plowing, hauling, or helping with the harvest.
Late summer and early fall are filled with harvesting
- here family members help my friend Marika harvest potatoes...
And I join in as well:
Throughout the summer, the work of canning fills the kitchen with steam and the smells of fruits and vegetables being preserved. Long after the harvest, home-canned pickles, salads, juices and jams preserve some of summer's bounty for the cold winter months.
A central aspect of running a household in the village keeping livestock - usually pigs, chickens, ducks or turkeys, and if a family is lucky, a milking cow. In addition to the meat, eggs and milk they supply, well-kept livestock impart the very important social value of being a "good housewife."
In addition to farm work, the village also supports a number of other occupations that range from house painter to mechanic and everything in between:
Other traditional occupations include the job of distilling vodka, which is usually done by women:
As recently as thirty years ago, looms were common elements in village households, and many women wove their own rugs and cloth. During my early visits to Apsha, I spent time observing Maria, one of the few remaining weavers in the region still making traditional cloth. Here she prepares her loom with cotton thread:
Until she dismantled her large loom in 2000, when the costs of materials became too high, Maria wove intricate patterns on cloths such as the one shown below, which was used to make a tablecloth.
Handwork, such as embroidery, cross-stich, and crochet are all common passtimes in the village, and women will often sit and chat while they work. Here Anna and her mother assemble a tablecloth by joining together two strips of cloth woven by Maria with hand-crocheted lace.
Villagers love the land around them, and excursions into the surrounding hills also straddle the territory between work and play, providing opportunities to supplement their diet with gathered foods such as mushrooms, nuts, berries and herbs. Here a neighbor shows off two enormous finds, including a porcini mushroom that weighed almost two pounds!
