* YOUTH *

"We obeyed our elders, - says Anfisa Ivanovna," who never read "Youth Honest Mirror," - you cannot visit a nearby village without permission." So you'd say: "But I want to go." My mother and grandmother answered: "Eat yours want with bread!" Or: "Everyone claims to know the girl, but not everybody saw her." And if you go out, you are given an order: "Try to keep your mouth more closed than open." Do not laugh, then.
    Shame is one of the significant moral categories if we talk about people's understanding of morality. This concept is on a par with the honour and conscience, of which Alexander Yashin said:
" In the myriad of riches, our words are precious: Fatherland, Loyalty, and Brotherhood." And there is Conscience, Honour... "

    There was a natural reticence (let's not confuse it with shyness) as an acquired one. At any age, from the earliest, reticence adorned a person and helped to resist the pressure of temptations. It is vital at the time of physical maturation. Lust was quietly restrained by usual shame, leaving the moral purity of even a spiritually immature young man.
  For this, the people did not need a unique rule printed in the printing house like "Youth Mirror." Instead, solid suggestions are interspersed throughout that book with such advice: "And this is a great deal of infamy, often when someone blows his nose, like trumpets into the tube ..." "Obscenely at a wedding to wear boots and bot-forts, so that those boots strip clothes from the female sex, and they to cause great noise, so men are not so hasty in his boots than without them."
     Clearly, the book is not of peasant origin since the peasants did not wear "bot-forts» and did folk dance at weddings, not ballroom dancing. More reveals the basis of "Mirror" advice: "Youths should always speak with each other in foreign languages to get used to it, and especially when they happen to say that the secret is so the servants and maids could not understand and that they can be distinct from blockheads ... " Here, it turns out, for what were functional foreign languages to honourable dudes multiplied under cover of the Tsar Peter's reforms. Possession of "manners" and foreign languages completely separated the upper classes from the people.
    Adolescence grew into youth in a few years. A boy finally developed physically and comprehended traditional agricultural, forest, and household labour skills.
    Only professional skills (carpentry, blacksmithing, and women's "linen" art) required further development. Others mastered these skills their whole lives and could only learn them at the end.
 But is it a disadvantage to him and his close ones because of such a desire? If the guy does not learn how to build dom churches, he will make a house with no problem. If a girl could not understand how to weave in "nine nooks," she would weave a simple canvas.
     Youth is full of fresh energy and creative thirst, and whether in a house, a village, or the country, everything is okay; this time of life is beautiful in itself, and everything in it is happy and harmonious. The girl or guy has time to talk, walk, and work in such circumstances.
But even in the worst times, household responsibilities and age requirements rarely contradict each other. On the contrary, they are mutually supportive.
For example, everyday work for guys and girls has never been a burden. Even the hardships of logging, which began in the late '20s and lasted for about thirty years, people have suffered relatively quickly thanks to this circumstance. Haymaking time, walking to the fence, the spring sowing, carting, and many community help events give young people a unique opportunity to meet and communicate, significantly affecting the quality and quantity of work made. Who wants to pass for a lazy, slob, or ignorant?
    After all, everyone in his youth dreams that someone will fall in love with him thinks about getting married and marriage and tends not to disgrace his family and people.
     Labour and festivities seemed to tame each other. One does not allow the other to transform into ugly forms. You cannot stay up all night until morning if you need to get up before sunrise and go to the pasture with the horses, but you cannot plow till dusk because of the evening festivities at the church. However, it also happens that sleepy bachelors would go into the forest and purposely not find the horses, flop in the shepherd's hut. But those guys were left with the untilled plot that day, and it threatened more severe consequences than the one referred to in the maiden limerick:
"My dear, it is hard to walk around mocked. Every my sweetheart has a non-sown pasture."

 Non-spoiled maidens also had to get up early, especially in summer. "In the morning, my mother wakes me up, and I continue to sleep in a hurry." The parents rarely played the same tune. If the father was strict, the mother always guarded her daughter against too hard work. And vice versa. If both parents are excessively hard-working, then the defendant was represented by a grandfather, or older brothers always somehow silently guarded the sisters. The strictness in the family is balanced with kindness and humour.
    Most acquaintances occurred in childhood and adolescence, mainly during visits, because people visited even the most distant relatives. They say " seventh water of a ninth of porridge" but still know each other and walk miles for fifteen or twenty to visit. Practically, if not in every village, then in every parish, there were close or distant relatives. Many would befriend strangers if there were no relatives in the remote town.
    Collective walking to other villages for festivities further enhanced chances for singles. To go for a walk for 10-15 km in the summer was nothing to talk about, especially if the weather permits. The return was the same night if went as guests - in a day or two, depending on the household circumstances.
    In the relations of boys and girls, there was no kind of patriarchal pedantry, as they say, if you take a walk with someone, then take walks till you get married. Not at all…
 From adolescence, acquaintances and interests have changed; young people kind of "grind" to each other, looking for a pair of soul and character. This does not exclude, of course, cases of the first and only love. Evidence of spiritual freedom and freedom of choice in youth's relationships are thousands (if not millions) of love songs and limericks.
    The feminine side does not look passive and dependent. Betrayal, love, break-ups, and interruptions are showered in these often improvised and always heartfelt ditties. Parents and elders were not strict about the behaviour of young people, but only up to the wedding. The newlyweds were deprived of this freedom and the ease of making new friends forever and ever. At that time, an entirely different life began.
Therefore, the wedding can be a sharp and well-defined boundary between adolescence and adulthood. But even before the wedding, freedom and lightness of new acquaintances, infatuations, and "loves" do not mean sexual freedom and frivolous behaviour. You can go for a walk, get to know, but ... Maiden honour is above all. There were apparent boundaries of what was permitted. They transgressed very seldom. Both sides, both male and female, tried to observe chastity.
 It is easy to fall into a gross error if the judge of public morality on separate cases is easily mistaken!
Here are just two: a drunk, a deranged reveller, off all the brakes, starts to sing during the obscene dance limericks, and the audience approves and, most surprisingly, truly supports him. But later, no one will treat him seriously ...
 Latest marvels like the circus and fairground ride with invisible women everyone would perceive with naive, almost childlike delight approving. But overall, the prevalent global attitude to all of this was, for some reason, definitely sarcastic.
    But in some questions of morality, public opinion was cruel, unyielding, and merciless. Bad maiden reputation rolled away very far. It wasn't stopped by any forest or swamp. A sin committed before the wedding could not be whitewashed by anything. But after the birth of an illegitimate child, as a girl would be forgiven her mistake, humanity prevailed over moral principles. Mother or grandmother of out wedlock mother to any attack responded with a proverb: "Whose steer would be jumping, but the calf is ours." It is an erroneous view that the need for chastity applies only to the women's side. A guy who had physical intimacy with a woman before the marriage, too, was considered tainted. A tarnished reputation harmed him, and he was called not a lad but a "dude."
 Of course, each of the two who conspired against chastity counted on secrecy, especially the girl. The secret, however, would come out eventually. The initiative of the sin usually comes from a guy. In itself, it depends on his moral level, which in turn depends on the moral status of his family (village, parish, society). An immoral family did not teach an individual how to spare others and keep the word. The heart of such a dude usually burns a desire to boast, and the secret is gone. A girl's bad reputation also impacted the perpetrator; he would be accused by the same measure.
Moreover, if they were real, all his feelings toward the girl would rapidly disappear, and he would switch to another "object" and eventually get married, somehow, not in a proper way.
With a tarnished reputation, the girl also had difficulty finding a partner. Now, it was not about love, but just getting somebody. Even a guy from a good family, but with the stigma of sin, lost his "prince charming" title, and proud girls avoided such candidates.
The veritable drama of love relationships experienced by most physically and morally healthy people, after even a happy love, does not exclude some drama. The beauty of relations between young people sometimes fed such mutually exclusive properties that coexist within one person as glibness and chastity, modesty and mischief.
     Love meant the same thing as pity; love could be "hot" or "cold." High poetry of the marital relationship is vividly reflected in a folk song:
"Do not sing, sing the little lark. You sing the spring on a thawed trail.
You send your voice through the dark forest, the pine forest, Moscow stone-walled, and a strong fortress!
 There was imprisoned a Good Fellow. He had been sitting there not for a year or two years. He sat there for precisely nine years.
In the tenth year, he started writing a letter. He began to write a letter to his father and mother. Father and mother refused: "Because we never have had thieves in the family. He also wrote to his young wife. Young wife got into tears..."
    But marriage is not only moral or spiritual but a material and economic necessity. Young years were marked by expectation and preparation for this significant life event. It stood on a par with birth and death. The too-late or too-early marriage appeared to people as a misfortune. The big difference in the bride and groom's age also ruled out a whole and beautiful relationship. Unequal and repeating marriages among the peasants were regarded as unhappy and economically disadvantageous from the economic point of view. Such marriages were cruelly mocked by widespread rumours. Beauty and anomaly exclude each other. There was often not only age but also income inequality. But it could not seriously affect the moral code built over the centuries. Pity (love as we call it now) overrode everything else.

* COMING OF AGE *

 Life in reminiscences of old people is invariably divided into two halves: before and after marriage. And indeed, not yet subsided the songs and not got the wedding cake staled as the entire way, all way of life is changing dramatically. In which direction? Such a question would have sounded naive and inappropriate.
In such cases, "bad" and "good" categories retreat to the background. Marriage is not fun (although it is, too). It is not a personal whim but a vital natural necessity connected with the new responsibility to the world and with fresh, not yet experienced joys of life. It's as inevitable as, for example, the sunrise or the onset of autumn.
There was no freedom of choice. Only a physical deformity and mental illness released people from the moral duty to marry. But even a moral obligation is not perceived as a duty if a person is morally sane. It may be the duty only for an immoral person. Because to prescribe genuine people's morality, it did not require any written codes of the said "Mirror" or "Flower Garden," where the monastic rules of conduct are collected.
Finally, the dramatized wedding ritual, which lasted several weeks, was completed. Time has come of age. Time to mature is the biggest time span of human life.
 Time after the wedding is the most exciting and hazardous for a new family. The terms "evil eye" or "spell" are considered in the civilized world to belong to superstitions. But it's not a matter of "black magic." The first threads of weak conjugal relationships are easily broken by one unkind word or an angry, contemptuous gaze.
 The psychological adaption of a bride to the world of no longer a stranger's family is not always quick and smooth. Though based on a common tradition, habits, especially the rules, are different in all families and houses. In some, such customs as pancakes to bake thin; in others, they like them thick; in this house, they saw firewood to one length; in another, they do different because there are different stoves, and the stoves are other because the masters who built them are not the same.
 It is difficult for a young woman accustomed to the girl's freedom, parental care, and affection to enter a new life in a new family. About this, the people have composed countless songs:
"You'll come beyond the irrecoverable line, and from that place, you will never come back. Never put on girl's clothes again. Because flowers don't bloom after fall, don't grow grass in winter's snow. Never will you be a maiden again."

A dramatic change of life state, evident in folk songs, is often taken as evidence of Russian women's terrible family situation, of their inequality and oppression. However, the legend of this inequality is fading away from the light touch of folk and literary monuments.

 "Do not worry, dear ones, I will not stay alone; 

if not you, then your friend will belong to me," - publicly and loudly sings a girl at the gathering if the guy starts to think too highly of himself.
  On a failed marriage, there was such a song:
  "Whatever she was, but got married to such a young man but a boor.
  He does not know how to treat me; he goes to a party without saying goodbye.
  And coming back to the gates, ignorant, screaming, and yelling:
 "Unlock wife, wide gate! "
 Oh, how I, young wife guessed, quietly got up, bare feet shoes put on,
  I have locked the gates tight: "Oh, you go sleep, boor, but outside the gates, your soft bed is yes, white snow, your high pillow is the gateway, your warm blanket is the winds of violent, you coloured curtain are the stars countless, yes you strong guards are gray wolves."

 
 That point is that the people to no one had not occurred to oppose a woman to a man, the family to the head of the family, children to parents.
 Neither Avdotya from Ryazan from the epic or historic Martha-Governor's Wife nor Alena (Nekrasov's and Lermontov's) resembles the downtrodden, unequal, or degraded. A historian, Kostomarov, speaking of the "Russian Truth" (the first known set of Russian laws), wrote: "A married woman enjoyed the same legal rights as men. However, for her murder or insult to her, the pay was the equal amount."
 Literacy or illiteracy Rights in Ancient Russia also did not depend on sex. "Princess of Chernihiv Euphrosynia, the daughter of Michael Vsevolodovich, started in Suzdal a school for girls, where they were taught to read, write, and church singing," - said the same Kostomarov, based on the chronicles. Equality and sometimes the superiority of women in the family were due to the economic and moral needs of the Russian national life.
What is the point for the head of the household to beat his wife or keep at bay the entire family? Only a spoiled, stupid man without a king in the head allowed such actions. And if natural stupidity though with a smile but was forgiven, then acquired stupidity (tyranny) was mercilessly derided. A bad reputation of the family tyrant, like the glory of a girl's dishonour, ran "in front of the sled."
 The authority of the head of the family was kept not on fear but on the conscience of the whole family. To maintain this credibility, you must be respected rather than feared. Such respect could be gained only by personal example: hard work, fairness, kindness, and consistency.
 If you remember more about kinship and parent-child love, it becomes clear why younger children "feared" elders. That "fear" for children did not come from fear of physical harm or even punishment but from shame, from the pangs of conscience.
In a good family, one condemning look of a father forced family members to tremble, while in the other, the rod, belt or just his fists were perceived quite indifferently. Moreover, the dominance of brute force and fear of physical pain flourished in deception, the secret mockery of elders and other vices.
     Headship from father to eldest son passes not at once but with the aging of father and son and the accumulation of life experience. So leadership kind of slips bit by bit and is poured down from generation to generation because the nominal head of the family is the grandfather, father of the father. But, still, to all, including the grandfather, it is clear that he is not the head anymore.
 Traditionally, the grandfather still has the first word at the family councils, but it is consultative rather than decisive, and he does not see this as an offence. The owner's father and son clearly show how to share the essence of seniority: one provides a form of rule, the other content. All this is gradually shifted.
 The same goes for the female "half" of the house. Young housewives, with the passing years, become the main hand "at the oven," and hence, "the big one." It happened naturally because the mother-in-law grew old and could not always carry buckets of fodder to the cattle to knead the bread. Once you start to bake bread, you have the key from the flour chest. If you milk cows, you pour milk and churn butter, and the loan must be given out not by the in-laws but by yourself. So, the one who makes better pies will obtain seniority.
For unmarried sisters to stay at home for too long was unnatural. It turns out that marrying younger sons was also necessary, if only because of a crowded house. But is it only a cramped house that shaped this need? Before marrying, the second son's father, grandfather, and eldest son began to think about building a new place for him, but the end of construction would often coincide with the wedding. The two married brothers lived with their families under his father's or grandfather's roof for some time. Women's quarrels, common in such cases, hurried construction.
After gathering help (sometimes double or triple), the father and sons quickly finished building the house for a younger son. The same happened with the marriage of the third and fourth sons unless war or some other scrape with all his impudence was bursting into people's lives.
 Conjugal fidelity was the basis of marital love and the well-being of the whole family. The peasants' wives cried when their husbands were jealous because jealousy meant distrust. It was believed that if a man does not trust, then there is no love. They cried that he did not love, but not because he was jealous.

* OLD AGE *

Sometimes, there is no sharp boundary between the time of the blooming of all forces of man and old age. Smoothly, slowly, and quietly, a man approaches his old age. Time moves at different speeds in all seven periods of life. Years of maturity are most numerous, but they fly faster than years of childhood or old age. How can this be explained?
    "Life is not only for youth, but death is also not only by old age"—as the saying goes, but it is not entirely comprehensive to a modern man. So much can be said to decipher this proverb. For example, youth cannot be considered a period of monopoly with the possession of happiness and joy unless you see happiness as something fixed and unchanging throughout life…
     People believe the essence of happiness is different in different periods of life.
    "Sasha sat down on the sleigh, flying like an arrow fast, full of happiness, from the mountain of ice," wrote N.A. Nekrasov about childhood. But how can you experience the same happiness, sliding from the mountain, for example, at an age when Sasha or Masha says, "She will pass by and like the sun shines on! She will look at you, and you feel like a million rubles!"
And at the time of old age, not any peasant woman in her right mind would dream of going to the rye and seriously expect from the fate of ... "the whole piece of calico, a scarlet ribbon to braid, belt, white shirt, belted in the hayfield." All of that, she wishes no longer for herself but for her daughter. Her daughter's happiness is the happiness of her own.
    Does this mean the daughter's happiness is greater than the mother's? A question again needs to be corrected. You cannot compare the joy of youth with happiness in old age. It is quite different both in form and content. The same can be said about love or "pity." A child loves his mother and other relatives. A boy suddenly begins to feel sympathy toward a stranger of the other sex. Finally, the sympathy goes into either an incomparable feeling of love or an irresistible desire into something sublimely tragic. The complexity and drama of this moment are in a fierce conflict between the spiritual and physical, high romance and mundane reality. This contradiction is resolved with a long, almost ritualistic premarital period and the wedding ceremony.
After the wedding, love (compassion) is reborn naturally and becomes qualitatively different, less vulnerable and more thorough. From unfathomable celestial heights, the romantic feeling was tearing down, falling on hard ground, but the marriage bed, prudently stockpiled by life, softened the blow.     
    The birth of children has almost always completely dispelled a sublimely romantic haze. Compassion (love) between the spouses of each other became rougher and more profound. It was fastened to the overall responsibility for children and universal love for them.
 After the birth of children, the couple sometimes kept some of an adolescent's lofty attitude that was not condemned but not very much encouraged by public opinion. Families without children are no families. Life without children is no life. If one year after the wedding, in the house does not yet creak the crib and slatted swinging cradle, the house is considered unlucky. The wedding, in such circumstances, remembered with some bitterness and then tried to quickly forget about it. Childlessness is the greatest misfortune, entailing humiliation of women, fake relationships, rudeness of men, and adultery. Childlessness upsets life harmony and throws off the rhythm. One unnatural causes another, and the house gradually becomes a scourge.
     Nevertheless, childless families are only sometimes destroyed. On the contrary, spouses honouring the sanctity of marriage either adopting children (orphans or from large distant relatives) or bravely bearing "the cross," getting used to the grave and single lobe.
 In a typical peasant family, all children were born primarily in the first ten or fifteen years of married life. "Pogodki" were called children to be taken with a year difference. Thus, even in a large family with ten or twelve children when the last was born, the eldest has yet to emerge from adolescence. This was important because pregnancy, when an adult child is still at home, was not very appropriate. And while no one directly blamed parents for the birth of a sudden "late child," spouses with the maturation of their first child and getting older, the rest of the children were not in such a hurry to enjoy the marriage bed ... They both have gradually returned to youthful chastity. Old age marked not only that.
Even the songs sung at adulthood and maturity were replaced by other, more appropriate meanings and forms. If, during a visit, joining the ring, the mother of an adult son sings about "boyfriend" or "betrayal," no one will take it seriously. Human behaviour is changing with the maturation of children, but physical aging is still very far away. Even a mature woman gets a girl's cheeks to blush during the holiday feast, but she cannot dance the old way when looking at her daughter-bride. Father, who just turned forty, still wants to compete or play dice seriously, but he never will because his sons should do it for real.
Under cover of futility, to defend them by a semblance of a joke, and in old age, he can still go to games, go fish perch, and buy his wife fairground candy. But marital status has moved you to the other cases and brings different, diverse entertainment. Love (compassion) for the wife or husband loses something appropriate or needed in their youth but becomes something new and unexpected for both spouses: tenderness, affection, and fear of losing each other. All this is carefully clapping for external roughness and feigned indifference. The couple even slightly criticized each other, and outsiders sometimes need to understand the essence of their genuine relationship.
Only the most talkative and straightforward laid out in conversations all the ins and outs of the family. They often ratted their "half," but it was generally innocuous. Self-irony and a joke rescued people this age, protecting their family affairs from unwary influences. "We sleep together, but money keeps separate" - with a severe look told a man about his relationship with his wife. Of course, everything is just the opposite.

* REALLY OLD AGE *

Physical and mental stress also gradually declines in old age, steadily increasing in childhood and adolescence. However, this does not mean the economic, productive uselessness of the elderly.
  Rich morals and working experience gave them equal rights in the family and society. If you cannot plow, nobody can do better sowing than you. Previously, he was chopping massive logs. Now, there is even more to do in the woods for him. It was simply a disgrace to hew pine needles, bark, and birch bark for mature men.
 If the grandmother could no longer weave canvas, she would again be called to the rescue when spinning. Without the old folks, a large family couldn't survive. If the family did not have a grandmother or grandfather, they would be invited to live with a lonely or disabled old woman, and she babysat the children.
An old person in a typical family did not feel a burden and did not suffer from boredom. He always had something to do; he was needed by each one separately and all together. He would lie on the stove and tell a grandson tales because telling or singing is no less entertaining than listening. To another grandson, he will make a pacifier from clay. Adolescent girls carve a spindle for a lady of the house, fix the kitchen tools, bring twigs for brooms, and then weave the shoes; daughter-in-law makes a brick-brack box, cuts spoon out of linden tree wood for everybody. It does take a lot of work to please everyone!
A really old man and a child are equally helpless and equally vulnerable. To an insensitive, thick-skinned man accustomed to the moral authority of parents, to their high standards, and spiritual and physical cleanliness, it will be hard to understand why grandmother over-salted cabbage and grandfather, always so careful, accurate, suddenly forgot to close the well or soaked his shirt. In such cases, to refrain from a reproach or rebuke could only men of high moral standing.
And it was precisely at such moments that his responsibility for the family matured, for its strength and prosperity, and not when he plowed a pen or cut down a new house. Of course, the attitude towards children and the elderly has always depended on society's moral level. This relation can probably almost accurately determine which way a nation goes and what awaits them soon. Another ethical and philosophical principle to judge people is the attitude toward death.
     Death to a Russian peasant seemed as natural as birth, but a solemn and menacing (and for many believers and even joyful) event, relieving from the physical suffering associated with senile decay and the moral anguish caused by the inability to continue working. Lacking their physical strength, old men did not lose their spiritual forces. Some called for the death, while others waited patiently for her. But as the saying goes: "Without death, one will not die." Suicide was considered a disgrace, a crime against themselves and others.
To the Northern Russian peasant, death did not cause fear or despair. On the contrary, it was the equivalent of the secret mystery of birth. Since you have already been born, death is as necessary as life. A natural and normal sequence in the changing age characteristics led to a philosophical, religious, and spiritual balance, a calm self-perception of the end of the road ... Namely, the sequence, the gradualism.
 While still of sound mind and strength, the old folks were quietly and with a certain solemnity preparing themselves for death. But meeting her calmly could only be someone who lived with dignity, sought not to do evil, and those who were not lonely had a family. According to popular understanding, the greater the sins are, the more difficult it is to die. Of course, there are no totally sinless people, and everyone felt the value of the degree of his own sins, their crimes before the people and the world. Pangs of conscience conform to the weight of this sin, so the religious rite of Communion and confession alleviated suffering from the dying.
Many people in old age look young. A Young, almost youthful face is a sign of kindness and a lack of evil. To some extent, longevity is dependent on kindness and health. Anger causes the disease, at least through our ancestors. From the contemporary point of view, it is naive. But naiveté is not necessarily stupid or absent of high inner culture.
Human life lies between two great mysteries: the secret of our appearance and the mystery of disappearance. Birth and death protect us from the horror of infinity. Both are associated with brief physical suffering. The child has it just as hard during childbirth as a mother, but the first pain is better than the last as the first battle. A man meets the labour of death, being prepared by life and overcoming physical suffering. Therefore, despite all the diversity of attitudes to end ("How many people, so many deaths…"), there was all the same/widespread/ attitude towards it - calm and wise.
It was believed that non-existence after death is the same as non-existence before birth, that earthly life is given to man as an award, and that something important is obscured from him by the secrets of those two mysteries. The logic and timeliness of all that inevitably being accomplished between birth and death affected all the features of traditional aesthetics.

**NATIVE NEST *

 Place, landscape, neighbourhood, and all the land, water, and sky were called a generic word - Nature. Yet, who needs to understand that beauty is different in different places? There is the spread of a bog with stunted pines; over there are surging hills, overgrown with magnificent pine trees. In one place, there is not even a tiny stream; the water is used from the wells, and in another, there is a river and a lake, and more than one, and also at different levels, like in Ferapontovo.
The natural beauty of one or another parish positively affects ordinary people's feelings. But never and nowhere had it influenced their sense of homeland. Impressions of the native nest and the enthusiasm of infant, child and adolescent experiences are born spontaneously.
 Local nature, like a mother, exists only in the singular. The world's wonders and beauty cannot replace some nondescript hill with a river bend where a birch or willow tree grows. The saying on this occasion says succinctly: "It is not lovely because it is good, but it is good because it is lovely."
 Homeplace will become even closer when men put their hands to it when every inch of the surrounding land is familiar to the touch and connected with clear household memories.
    The homestead and inside of the home, the hearth and the red corner were the focus of economic life, the center of the peasant world. This world is in the material, and moral sense was consistently expanding circles, which included the dwelling first, then the whole house. Then, finally, the farm, field, pasture, the long-burning and forest meadows located from the village for ten or fifteen miles.
 Nature begins immediately behind the gate. But the farther from home, the more independent it becomes and the wilder it grows. In remote, inaccessible places, the most subtle traces of human hosts received special significance: score, barely beaten path, just a stone in a stream or perceptible place where people rest. A forest's unspoiled wilderness, combined with such rare details and various incidents (for example, an encounter with a bear), becomes an exciting and unique experience with a strange intimacy. Such forest frightened, soothed, tortured, caressed, oppressed, and cheered. The man has the same way as urge to communicate and an inherent desire for solitude. These centripetal and centrifugal forces (if you speak the language of physicists) are balanced in the peasant household by the same opportunities. Needs for both communication and solitude manifested themselves from very early years.
In childhood, the desire for solitude is noticeable, for example, in the game "in a cage" when the child plays in a small but still his own "house." The need for privacy, mainly girlish, burns even brighter in youth. It is very noticeable in old age, not to mention the period of married life. The forest gives a person an excellent opportunity to be alone, philosophize, calm down, and reflect on their relationships with people. Such thoughts, however, were never an end in themselves. They have invariably accompanied some work.
The most challenging thing in the woods - is stubbing for arable land. The easiest is picking mushrooms and berries. Mikhail I. Kuznetsov, a great connoisseur of material and consumer culture of the Russian North, wrote: "A rare case where a resident of the North, who lives in the surrounding woods, will not find opportunities to replace the metal with wood. What's missing in the fir grove, in the riverside willow and elderberry bushes, he invariably found in a birch grove. This is a vast storehouse for him, where it was all he needed: blades, pitchfork, rake, handle, shaft, rocker and any size, slender, not yet had time to turn white birch. From birch twigs were woven rope belts to the plow. Rings were made from a jeweller's small size to half-meter diameter. These intertwined, coiled birch twigs tie logs in the rafting timber. The rings were required very often and a lot ...»
 The land reclaimed from the forest is called differently: burning, hooked, clearing.
All of this also had their own names, sometimes quite poetic. A wild and distant forest landscape, ennobled by mowing, a cozy bridge across the creek, lava through the bright and rocky, then calmly-sedge river, became very dear, like all places close to home. A lateral dike through the swaps in the faraway yielded a feeling of security and sustainability of life. A fire pit or firewood pile in the woods can be calming if one gets lost. A morsel of willow bark, a mark on a young birch tree, a familiar stump or an old log has strengthened the invisible connection between man and nature. But nothing has so ennobled the environment as the cut-out shed, the primary element of this ancient architecture and the whole economic system.

* FOREST HAYLOFT*

After a long walk, after a shaking and vicious drive in the impenetrable forest, through marches, hills, and dense bushes, suddenly opens a clean, mowed, or all in bloom meadow and in the clearing, there is a forest hayloft. And immediately disappears fatigue from the long, dangerous journey.
    The spirit of your distant ancestors, materialized for you by their tireless work, reflects in these finished, silvery from time logs. However, in the old days, nobody noticed that silver hue. It was all taken for granted and therefore was invisible. The forest haylofts initially were built from the same firs, pines, and sometimes the aspens, which grew at the site of the future meadow. Expanding meadows, a peasant cut down more trees, of which, if desired, can be made one or more haylofts.
 The logs were placed on each other without the moss but closely, without large gaps. In summer, there a cool breeze seeps through the cracks. The barn ventilates with hay, the moisture does not stick, and logs do not rot for a long time.
The roof was made of one slope; the runner covered the top, rarely with the shingles. The structure was built with two pitches also. Under the roof gutters often nested forest birds. Under the same roof, wasps spun and glued their laminated gray nest, similar to the salt-away. Instead of the usual plank floor, were used firwood logs.
    To build a barn takes a few days for two guys. Nobody bothered with the gates. Hay was taken away during winter when the swamp froze. The frosted blizzard mingled with the smell of snow and still stood apart from the scent of summer flowers. Such contrasts have met in peasant life very often. They have underlined the connection of the seasons emphasized the uniqueness of labour, tradition and general life experiences.

* HUT IN THE FOREST*

Peasant life in the North of our country is difficult to imagine without the forest. A plowman often combined hunting, fishing and forestry skills (collection of resin, extraction of tar, the procurement of coal, willow and birch bark, berries, mushrooms, etc.). Haymaking in the forest also forced not only to stay overnight but to live in the woods for weeks.

 Therefore, the cabin was simply indispensable. Not everybody would build it but it was used by all, from vagrants and beggars to merchants, and ending with the police officer if the cabin was standing near the road connecting the townships. Apparently, the hut in the forest is the most primitive, preserved in its original form, the oldest human habitation. A square cage with a single-window, with a ceiling of tightly finished spruce loges, with a flat or not very steep gable roof. The ceiling was insulated with moss pressed by a layer of earth. The door was made a small but tight, with the wood hinges made from birch brackets on the wooden hooks in the wall. Wide bunk beds made out of wooden planks were awaiting the weary workers. In small huts instead of bunks were arranged ordinary benches. In the middle or even in the corner was a dark, pleasant smelling with heat and smoke the trivet - hearth, built of large stones.

 Even now, an experienced hunter sets up a place overnight in the woods in an ancient way: after collecting rocks lines the bed of them on the damp, and even on frozen ground and starts on it the campfire. Heated, cleaned with the broom stones retain heat till the morning, it makes easier to beguile even the longest and cold night directly under the stars. Using this way a man created the hearth.

 Initially, the campfire was just surrounded by stones, then people learned how to build the walls, and that they would not fall apart, willy-nilly they had to bring the walls together. The cracks in the stone arch created an excellent draft. The bigger the stove, the less firewood was required and warmer was in the cabin. CO gas disappeared along with the extinction of coals. The chimney in the wall was closed and until the morning there was a warm and pleasant smell. The noise of wind in the frosty night forest forced to appreciate the warmth and comfort and to thank the person who built the cabin. A traveller quietly fell asleep with such feeling. In the summer, at the time of midges and mosquitoes, the smoke easily drove away from the cabin that numerous creatures.

No wonder about the good carpenter is said: "He hones the frame so that a mosquito cannot put his nose in." The cabin often had a parking space for the horse, sometimes it just was fenced, not cut, put the logs close to each other. A resemblance of the roof was arranged from light poles, pine needles and bark. Forest sheds on the banks of rivers and lakes were complemented with a boat mooring and lines for drying nets.

* * PASTURES**

No less than the building, the fence has shaped the surrounding view, especially in open places and close to water. A wall in the forest called "osiek," in the field it was "ogorod" or "wall," around the house was the palisades.
"Osiek" in the forest, together with a bridge, a glade and a road, animate the landscape, complementing the natural hills, streams, large stones, and hay meadows. In the summer, the peasants never herded cattle into the fields. For this purpose, they shielded large areas of forest. "Osiek" didn't let cows wander far; the shepherd by the bell's sound always knew where the herd was.
Sometimes the villagers put additional fences for two or three small pastures, so-called "suburbs." The entrances and driveways in the fields and pastures were carried out with "elbows" and gates.
 If an absent-minded person or even an evil man does not close the gates or doesn't do it properly, the horses could immediately go into the woods. There were times when people were looking for them for weeks afterward. It could be even worse if a herd of cows hits grain fields. Therefore, fencing, gates and challenges are maintained in good repair.
Interestingly enough, among the horses, you could often find mischief that broke the fence using the chest and even open the latch with the muzzle. And take away the whole herd to the oats field. Unfortunately, some cows also trained themselves in such vile skills, which often caused comic and tragic stories.
The accusation of intentional damage by cattle did not bode well.
The forest fence was attractive because of plenty of raspberry, currant and gooseberries bushes. It would not let to get lost in the woods and starve. (Even from the fields in dark autumn evenings, when nothing is visible, people returned home by touch on the garden fences.) A nearby pasture after distant meadows seemed quite familiar, homely. Trails and entire roads trampled down by the cattle in the most impenetrable places always took people to the gates in the run - a relatively narrow strip between two fences, leading through the fields to the village.
A shepherd's shed (a forest hut in miniature), built-in each pasture, attracted the young and old. Rarely a man wouldn't drum into hanging on the pole board. The fun here is combined with a benefit - to drum and hoot in the pasture was considered almost a duty of everyone. It drove away from the wild herd beasts.

* * THE THRESHING-FLOOR**

 The runway, and more often a direct route through the gate, led a rider walker into the field. In any weather, at any age, it is a pleasure to get out of the woods into the own fields, see the first field hayloft, then the threshing floor, and the whole village: a wide cluster of houses, granaries, baths, basements, firewood piles, nurseries...
Out of the woods, nobody ever was driving with empty hands, with the empty wagon. Everyone carries something with themselves or on themselves. Firewood, hay, pine needles, birch twigs for brooms, stakes, poles, rocks, bark, bark for shingles, decks, pre-fabricates of handles for scythes, rakes - hundreds of other large and small objects that are the responsibility of men of the house. And for all of this, you need to find a place to put, to soak or to dry.
Boredom will come if people do not know what they can do; boredom is ridiculous and absurd in rural life. Because of its short duration, the variety of tasks turns into fun and entertainment, most notably in the forest. As for working in the field, there is no less diversity. The threshing floor and the barn tie into the whole year-round cycle of fieldwork. There is one way from the threshing floor: to the barn and the mill, but the interest and fun accompanied a peasant, even here, on this short journey.
     Every detail, down to the bag's tie and the creaking of a wagon, had its meaning. The threshing floor is the threshold of the native nest, literally and figuratively fanned by bitter but exciting haze... The threshing floor was made of large smooth block, so soft and dense that even a single grain couldn't get lost.
     As soon as the April sun was beginning to thaw out from the roof large silver icicles, a gang of children threw open the gates to play the game of huckle bone. Adults almost completely freed all the haylofts from the chaff and straw by the spring. The threshing floor attracted rabbits and birds, so teenagers caught both kinds using snares.
 In the dark autumn holidays, guys led to the threshing floor, into the straw bales, their girlfriends, so to say "sit"... These "sittings" for young couples didn't always end well ...
After harvesting dried barn at night, older folks entertained young people with stories, amused themselves, and went to spook each other.
 Ironically, the threshing floor in the 30-s assumed the duty of the village center of culture. In the middle of the threshing floor, where in the morning were threshed corn, a portable film projector was set up on the boxes. To the hoist of the barn was suspended the screen, and boys alternately were spinning the dynamo. To roll two or even three parts in a row was enough of volunteers, but a few ventured to complete this feat. Then, under the chatter of the machine, power-driven manually, the audience-friendly chorus read the subtitles.

**BARN * *

If there was a street fight and a boy had to flee, he had to run at least to his bathhouse, at least to get to the barn. Fervour of the pursuers soon waned - so tremendous and indisputable was the protective force of home, the nest. Under its protection, the escapee gained confidence in their abilities. The pursuer would lose his aggressiveness once he walked into the stranger's property.
At the same time, to a traveller with a good cause, the house was wide open even after the dark. Not everybody had a barn, but everyone wanted to build it. In the barn was kept the main wealth of the peasant family: bread, linen, leather (raw and dressed), in the winter meat carcasses and frozen fish - purchased and caught. In some barns, there were canvases and clothes. Grain filled the granaries, flax seeds stored in bags and wooden containers.
Sometimes barns were built on stilts to save seed from mice; there were barns with two floors. Barns had a double roof with shingles and boards. Internal locks and iron-clad doors were standard.
 In the village Timonikha in pre-kolkhoz time, a public granary was kept in the peasant mutual help fund. In the event of a disaster, society helped victims. Taking and giving grain, the storekeeper measured using a wooden container and levelled the top with a distinctive curved stick. When receiving, the stick was levelled grain with the hump up, and when giving was with the hump down. The difference was for the maintenance of the storekeeper, the shrinkage, outage and mice. The collective farm weighed grain on the rope scales with selected weight stones - substitutes for metal weights.
In Yuletide, adolescents and young women ran at midnight to their barns and pressed their cheeks against the freezing wall. They listened to what happened behind the wall. If you hear the rustle of pouring grain means that it will be a good harvest, and hence the wealth ... A few who didn't have enough mind and heart saw this as only a superstition.

** BATH HOUSE **

 A rare family in the village did not have a bathhouse. However, in the North existed such parishes, where bathhouses were not built at all, villages as along the river Monza, where people bathed in the ovens all their life. But there are not many aforesaid places in the Russian North.
The upper rows of the walls and the ceiling of the bathhouse were cut and put together with special care because the heat and flavour of the "banya" depended on it.
 In a good bath-house, it feels great even when the lower logs are entirely rotted and the floor is frozen. In addition to the stove with rocks and a two-three-tiered shelf, there were one or two benches in the bath. The dressing room was built without the ceiling, so-called "cold."

* HOME *

Building houses can be compared to painting icons. The art of the painter and carpenter in ancient times fed the origins of Russian culture. There are simply no identical icons on the same plot, although each must be canonical, the same with houses.
    Types of housing in the Russian North are diverse enough. Most homes have a typical roof over the living and household space, winter and summer buildings. Following only one of these conditions forced to build large, spacious mansions, which were not made in other places of Russia.
The winter hut, wintering, was a place where people moved to live with the first snap of cold weather. It was built differently, but if it does not have a great stove, benches, or bunk beds, this is no longer a wintering but something else.
  Everything in the house, except the stove, was made of wood. From the time, the walls and ceilings began to turn yellow and, over the years, became amber-brown if the stove was made in a "white" style. In the house with the stove built-in  "black" style, the higher top of the house grew dark and shiny from regular rubdown. Benches and floors were white or yellowish-white; they were scrubbed for each holiday.
By cleanness of the wooden floor judged girlish diligence and purity. But it is not so easy to observe cleanliness in the winter if the family is big, and every morning you have to warm up and carry to a pen a dozen buckets of swill to animals. Therefore, the floor in the house (as flax in the field) has always been a woman's pride and misfortune. Before washing, the floor was poured over the hot caustic lye and then scraped with a broom made of grass together with the crushing of the sauna stones. In houses heated in a "white" way, the walls and ceiling were washed for Easter once a year. The stove was whitewashed with diluted water ash.
In the old days, the windows in the Russian hut did not have curtains. To look into the house from the street was allowed to anyone, and it wasn't considered in any way wrong. Between the frames was dark charcoal to absorb moisture, and for the beauty, it put beside it the orange brush of rowan or scattered handful of cranberries. The shrine and the walls were decorated with dry bundles of medicinal herbs on holidays with snow-white kerchiefs and towels.
 If, in the family, someone of the men was engaged in hunting, then the tails and outstretched wings of grouse or grouse were nailed to the main pier. Under the main support beam usually hung a large bull's bubble with the peas inside, instead of the door hangers often fastened elk antlers. Just below the ceiling on the wall, repeating the length and width of the benches above ran the shelf. At the door from the stove to the wall were the bunk beds.
 The "raven" was a powerful top beam that held the bunk benches. During a wedding or another revel over the "raven" hovered child's faces. Kids were watching what was happening downstairs. Nobody made them go to sleep. And how many exciting things you can learn and see, looking from above, feeling that you are out of reach and at the same under the protection of the home. During the week in the evening, lying on the bunk, old people told children fairy tales, falling asleep in the most sacred places. A child would wake grandmother or grandfather, but they forgot at what point stopped and started all over again...
    During the winter, the hut often smelled either like the pine needles or like brought from the frost the spruce needles, which used to be rubbed on the traps for rabbit hunting. But exceptionally sharp and delicious was the smell of fresh bird-cherry rods for fishing gear, as well as a bunch of elms twigs for fastening of the sleighs and bundles of firewood.
When the oven was closed with cakes or loaves of bread inside, the smell of baked dough won overall. Especially pleasing was a smell on the street among the frost and snow. Fearful of intoxication by CO gas, the whole family, except the house lady, tried to get outside or to another building. The adults always have things to do. The children also know what to do, where to go, and what to play. It was never crowded in the house. Yet, the vastness of the summer house, its spaciousness, was missed throughout the winter.
Spring transition to living in the "front house" was always joyful. But before the winter frames were taken out from the windows, people changed the felt boots to leather boots and stopped to close the stove's vent tightly. Grandfather and grandmother are still sleeping in the winter house while drinking tea and having dinner in the summer hut together with everybody. Aired bed blankets were cleaned, dried in the sun, and hung in a barn.
    A first mosquito appears, and in the big barn, where roof swallows sing under the high plank, the first tent has been set up. Pretty soon, a whiff of brooms and the first hay will appear. How long ago has the home crackled and boomed from the Baptismal cold? Now it makes a noise from the warm summer wind.

* THE HOUSE AND NEARBY *

In addition to the bathhouse, a good owner always built (somewhere on the hill) a cellar or a small log house, covered and lowered into the ground. In the cellar were preserved carrots, turnips, beets. Onions were stored on the bunk in the dry heat. Walks to the cellar, especially in winter, were eagerly awaited by children.
 In the garden, people built a hotbed for growing cabbage, rutabaga's and cucumber seedlings, immediately, if there was no river, dug a well. In the well during the heat was lowered in buckets of meat, butter and milk.
  The culture of brewing, long known in Russia, included the cultivation of hops. Therefore, in the established household where everything is lined up, everybody got married, and there are the most necessary things, it was desirable to set up a place for growing the hops. Unfortunately, long slender pegs (twenty or thirty) stuck still not at every house. Some people preferred to purchase the hops. To save these pegs every year after harvest, they were pulled and piled to dry to reuse in the spring again.     
    What could be more attractive to young people than these lightweight and surprisingly durable lances? A stack of birch, spruce, alder firewood completed the view of the yard, directly adjacent to the neighbouring household.
 In winter, nearby the house always stuck on the side a wood-sled: the peasant's winter wagon. This ancient structure consisted of a pair of curved (at notch) birch runners. Into the birch runners were hammered four doubled, also made of birch sticks. The runners were joined with elderberry twigs, which wrapped each pair of sticks. The bend of the elderberry's twigs was cut down and steamed up. The birch sticks were tightly clamped to the curve, and to prevent loosening of the ends of the twigs, they were fastened with a ring woven from twisted birch rope...
    The most strong twig connecting the front end of the runners was the head of wood-sled, the thick elderberry's axes which did not allow the runners unbend. The second axes of each runner were attached to the end of the birch shafts. The problem is that the shaft must be mobile, and the load on the cart is in the hundreds of pounds simultaneously. On the strength of swivels, connecting the end of the shafts with the wood-sled depended not only on the quality of the harness but many other things in the peasant household.
If a long, thin birch trunk interweaves twist, you get along the flexible bundle of robust fibres, starting with the most delicate top. This bundle, twisted into a ring, is called the wrapping.
     A good owner always had a half-dozen of these rings in stock: they hang on the pin in the shed or in the entryway. Going to the faraway carting, people always take a wrapping or two just in case. There have been cases when the groom arrived on the cart with a broken rope swivel was sent back with nothing. To put a new wrapping, you must untwist the ring and spin it again, but on the axes of the wood-sled with the entire load. The shaft with a notch at the end is inserted into the wrapping (ring) and turns it into an incomplete revolution. Then you can safely go in anywhere with any load.
On the wood-sled were transported heavy tall trees. So that the butt of the log didn't push out from the wrappings, under logs were put the pads with semi-circular notches. The top of the trunk was put on the so-called under-sled (a short wood-sled without the heads with barely curved, but the wide runners). The under-sled was connected with the main wood-sled with ropes crisscross for which runners had the eyelets.
 On the same wood-sled, if we put on them "the chair": tree bundled poles or bars, which increase the width of the cart, you could deliver hay, straw, oversized volume items. The most dangerous thing for a winter rider was "rumbles" - the steep ice slopes polished with the sleds' runners. Carts somersault on them, dragging and even dropping not very strong horses. Strong horses would get loose out of shafts.
    Later the wood-sled runners were "shoused": on them were put narrow iron strips. Finally, the slack-sleigh ("rozwalny") is something between the wood-sled and the sleigh - were used for small trucking luggage for short and long-distance driving. Their sides formed by curved chairs were interwoven with ropes or sewn up by shingles. Such carts with a shallow back, blind-sided and limbers, were also called the sled-runners.
    The field sled, sleigh, with the box, and without it, was made high-backed for two or three riders. Its back was painted in red on black, green on red. The sleigh, as well as the wood-sled, could be made without a single metal part. But anyone who wanted to show off his outing Shrovetide sled inevitably becomes a debtor of a blacksmith.
The cover of the sleigh was woven of thin willow twigs. Such fashionable sleds had a box, and the seat could be swung back, opening up a space for presents. At the feet were put a sheepskin coat or sheepskin blanket.
    With the reins in his hands, the owner sat on the right. When driving, he "threw" one foot out partly for style, partly in the event of fall. (Luckless riders often broke a leg in road mishaps.) His wife, sister of the bride, and sometimes a friend or relative would sit on the left with the harmonica. Behind, at the back, can rest a casual companion.
Adolescents and young guys were very fond of the free rides, especially if the owner did not see this. Wondering why the horse does not run (even there is soap in the groin), the rider gets angry, but looking back, he does not see anything because an illegal rider could hide at the back. But free-riders yet did not go far because they had to hoof it back on foot. Summer riding is wicked against winter riding. It is better to step than a trot in a shaking one-sit cart, even on the flat road. The two-axed (four wheels) cart shakes less, but the dust and the rumble from it are more than enough.
 Some of the peasants had their own carriages and a hearse. It was the same type of carriage only with long flexible poles instead of springs, a light two-wheeled cart with a small sleigh on its springs, like a modern jockey stroller. A simple pair of wheels with a box on the axe was called the portage; it was used for transporting long poles.
 But what is the cart without the harness? First, of course, the principal part of the harness is a clamp made of two arched wooden pieces. On the top, they are tightly fastened by the belt, but in a way, so it was possible to push them out. At the bottom was secured with a leather roll, or rather, a half-roll. Densely packed with straw, it fits the horse's chest and could be pushed apart when putting the clamp on the head. The carefully fitted clamp felt fits the horse's withers and shoulders on the sides. In the clamp holes were put the tugs, the collar was covered with leather. A long, twisted strap completed the entire device. The knot at the end of the belt is not allowed to pull out. Clamps were of different sizes, but the same harness saddle fit any horse. The harness saddle was attached to the horse's back through the belly girth. The ends of the girth connected to the shafts, first left, then suitable tugs. You could go.
If the horse harnessed without the crupper, you could do it gently. The crupper is a system of straps attached to the clamp; it would not allow the horse to get out of the clamp. If the horse were backing away, it would be doing together with the wagon. Not knowing all this, it is difficult to understand the meaning of many Russian proverbs.
 But it is not all about the proverbs. Around the horse and the harness was created such a powerful field, an aesthetic aura that cannot be imagined without past life. The wagons were stored under the carports, and inside the houses, harnesses hung around the stall. During winter, clamps and saddles were kept in the place to dry. Each premise has been assigned its inventory and its tools. To describe the structure and the use of the peasant tools and household items would require a multi-volume edition.
 In the threshing floor had to have a set of brooms made of upper birch twigs, rakes, and ash shovels to scoop up the grain in a heap, trio-corn forks made of birch to raise peas up to threshers, and a thin, light pole with a short twig at the end to bring in the sheaves into the barn.
 There was always a brush and several dustpans in the barn, not to mention the baskets and bags. In the bathhouse stood a half dozen bowls. A rake and large wooden tongs were fetched and immersed in water-heated stones. In different parts of the house were kept plows, harrows, scythes, pitchforks, sickles, small rakes and hooks for taking down manure from the carts, hand millstones, mortar and pestle for pounding oats and flax.
Proverb of the pounding water in the mortar belongs to another mortar used in lying position and used to pound the rags, mats, bags. This mortar has always been on the beach or near the ice-hole. We do not know what kind of mortar was used for a flying witch. As a child, for some reason, often I used to have such a fantasy: that's to sit in this water mortar and go by boat down the river past all the villages, under bridges and clouds. However, sometimes, I wanted to climb into the trunk or hide in a chest, a drive through the village on the weaver's machine. But the most exciting thing was to climb "a tower," in a modern way, to the attic, looking from above through a window into the far distance. Here in the winter, you can stock up on frozen rowan or suddenly discover a swallow's nest.

* THE YARD *

The house that had no cattle, you can see from afar by many signs, and when walking into the hallway, could be recognized by a smell devoid of animal life. More precisely, it was the absence of any odours.
The yard is called the entire rear half of the house, built in two levels and under the common roof. Below were housed two to three stables; atop was the "povet" (upper barn), space for feed, barns (closets) and lavatory.
 The life of animals was never opposed to another, higher, spiritual life - human life. A farmer considered himself a part of nature, and the domestic animals connected man to the whole almighty and eternal nature. Proximity to animals and nature softened the harshness of loneliness that tormented the soul when looking at the distant glimmer of the Milky Way.
     About a good horse, as well as an intelligent dog, it is concluded this: "It understands everything, just cannot speak." The horse in the peasant world ploughs and drives, but it also helps to give a man a moral sense. A horse must be given a nickname, while the sheep always called the same - Seravka and mutton - Serko, all chickens were awarded only primitive nicknames: Gaudy, Blackish, and Reddish.
Horse's coat influenced, of course, the nickname, but none of the other animals had so many shades and the names of skin, like a horse: chestnut, palomino, bay, and brown, light chestnut, bay, roan, buckskin, flea-bitten. A horse was forged, polished, scrubbed, brushed, and faded wool was pulled out, the mane and the tail were trimmed.
When the gnat and the mosquitoes disappeared, the tail was tied into braids; it was considered the highest chic at the wedding and the Shrovetide. Horses were sometimes so intelligent that if a child accidentally fell under the belly, he could play safely; they do not even touch him by hoof.
  But there were stubborn, tetchy and with various oddities animals. Others were running at a trot in the harness for as long as the owner did not stop; on the contrary, no force can make it run. For a horse to willingly ride with a wagon into the gates of the upper shed, it was led up there first with a light load and being fed by oats. The animals were loved and spoiled by all the family. But the men, from young boys, took care more of the horses than the cows.
Cows also had their names. Relations the lady of the house with the cow reached a level of understanding that they were often even "on bad terms," and the cow was not inferior to a woman in sophistication: they pushed with the muzzle, would not give milk. The hostess did not remain in debt. To their mutual satisfaction, reconciliation necessarily occurred. Women talked with cows as with human beings. Cows greeted them with their deep moo, licking, jerking big hairy ears. A calf immediately after birth was given a name, always had nicknames dogs and cats.
    The general mood in the family, the nature of the host and hostess, their mutual love and respect had rather a noticeable effect on the character and behaviour of animals. Very interesting, sometimes utterly inexplicable from the standpoint of reason, there were relationships of children and animals and some domestic animals with others. Even 100 years ago, the boundary between reality and fantasy was barely visible in the peasant household.
Traditional ancient folk beliefs, refreshing, imaginative, combined with natural impressions, created semi-fantastic images. Binary radicalism - either you believe or do not believe- fit such consciousness. People's life without poetry is unimaginable, but where everything is clear and explicable, poetry disappears and is immediately replaced by stunningly dull rationalism.
No one dared to say: "There is nothing." Instead, people preferred evasive: "Who knows, maybe there is, maybe not…." Man, who does not believe in anything, publicly and actively asserts their nihilism, subjected to subtle public ridicule.
 But all the same, how to understand this semi-fantastic image? Too impressionable people often became the culprits of its creation. When hearing at night in the woods very close, an expressive, moaning cry, even the most educated man forgets about the owls' existence.
  A cat, climbing on the chest tightly sleeping man, appears as a goblin to him in his sleep. A sly, sophisticated in treachery, escaping from any trap, the wolf was taken as a werewolf. People were not ashamed of their imagination. People who otherwise firmly do not recognize the otherworldly forces would not be destroying the imaginary system of beliefs; they (at night or in the forest), quite often, even for the time being, became believers.
A "goblinok' was affectionately called the fantastic keeper of the house. He would appear to different people in different ways. Some called him a yard goblin (trustee of cattle), other a behind the oven grandfather, the third former and latter way, depending on circumstances. As a horse and cow, a goblin was almost a member of the family. But, on the other hand, he may become angry and hurt and temporarily abandon the house. In the latter case, it was believed that misfortunes would fall one after another. A "goblinok" presence at home was determined by various trifles: the mane of a horse would be made dreaded, he will find and put to the forefront a long-lost object, the open gates then suddenly be closed at night and not only closed but also tied with a rope.
When leaving for the haulers' job or military service, in short, for a long time leaving home, some guys went to the upper barn and talked to the "goblinok." They asked him to take care of the house, not to hurt the animals, while the owner would be absent. A good "goblinok" in response rustled brooms, lightly squeaked or coughed, re-assuring the master: go away in peace, everything will be well ... Roughly the same properties conferred the popular imagination to bannushka (bathhouse goblinok), gumennushka and ovinnushka(threshing-floor goblinoks).

THE * WEEK *

Most people lived, not knowing and not noticing the month's dates. Days of the week are another matter. The week was the basic unit of time in the annual cycle. Time was measured by weeks, from holiday to holiday, and the length of Lents and the spaces between them. Also, the periods of pregnancy, haulers time, prolonged illness, life cycles of animals.
 Russian names of the seven days a week (except Saturday) speak for themselves, about each of them composed of dozens of proverbs and sayings.
In the village lived at least one bibliophile that owned a calendar. Often such a man led the diary, as did Ivan Ryabkov from the community Pichikhi. Gregory Potekhin from the village Vahrunikhi still writes down great, in his opinion, events, mainly the weather. There are some experts, who for decades, led their wooden calendars. Days of the week acquired depending on weather its own characteristics; they had their colours in the imagination of the peasant (red, gray, etc.).
The weather made days of the week look happy or not, a beautiful day or lousy weather quite palpable influenced the mood and for the elderly who were wearied from years for hard work on well-being. But the origin of a famous adage about Monday, widely known in our time, was not originated from the weather.
 Drunkards and lazy bums, called loafers, could not have stability in the peasant household. One of two things: either work hard or be branded as a laughingstock.
Monday was not difficult for a well-rested person. Tuesday is still considered successful in the study results, as the employee managed to get up to speed, but Wednesday is regarded as the most productive day. "The week is strong by Wednesday, "- said on this subject in the proverb. On Wednesday and Friday used to fast for the faithful Russians, those days people should not amuse themselves too much, or eat meat and dairy foods.
 In very strict families, mothers did not even breastfeed babies. The week's fourth, fifth, and sixth days were labour days, but one had to heat the bathhouse on Saturday. The bathhouse was heated before the big church holidays, prepared for the dying, childbirth, and celebrating the return from the long journey.
Sick and very old were taken to the bath in the winter on sleds or were carried on the back.
 A unique ritual bath would be prepared for the bride before the wedding and for the couple after the wedding. Latter, by no means, has been deprived of common sense. However, the chastity of the married couple, due to high morals and youth, sometimes made the wedding night not very successful. A bath would bring them very close and remove uneasiness. From that day, the husband and wife went to the bath together, although the appearance and maturation of kids this habit could change.
In the large family, the order of going to the bath depended on many factors, but there have always been fans of the first steam, as dry steam was maintained only up to the time of washing. In basins hisses the stone-heated water yet, but bathers already on the top bench. They sweat, discuss everything, beat themselves with the birch twigs, splash water on the hot stones. Some were taken along kvas for drinking. If splash kvas on the hot rocks, a surprisingly pleasant cereal odour appears in the bath. The bath without the birch twigs is like bread without salt.
 Before haymaking time, people broke twigs, choosing a time when the birch leaf is not dry but is already strong and plucked good juices. Then, a pile of fragrant green branches brought in a cart, armfuls transferred under the roof as if giving off healing power, small kids were very fond of sitting and doing somersaults. And this somersaulting could remain the most beautiful childhood memories just because of the strong aroma of birch, bright green, the chirping of swallows, the coolness of the barn and summer heat, blue sky and white multi-tiered clouds. And of course, thanks to the good grumpy grandmother, who puts twig to a twig, making a bundle. Two bundles joined together to make it easier to hang on poles.
People wouldn't forget to make a birch twigs bundle as a gift to the children: the smaller the child, the smaller a whisk. Pairs of bundles were hanging in the winter under the roof, recalling the summer in the cold season. Used in the bath bundles were used for sweeping. Sometimes one pulls out of the leafless broom twig and stuck in a wall somewhere in a conspicuous place. An unruly kid would bypass this place, looking at this twig...
Women gathered during Midsummer Night, a bouquet of flowers of all colours and used as the birch twigs besom in the bath. In the "banya," people healed of all ages and from most diseases. First physical hardening based on the temperature difference, children got in the bath, and the difference gradually increases with age, increasing the duration of "floundering." in the snow. If the bath is by a river or lake in the summer, it is just more pleasant to dive into clean water. Gradually it was possible to accustom themselves to the icy water. But the idea of the infinite possibilities of "hardening" is still not considered severe. Modern "walruses" did not cause admiration or delight in the people.
By the way, even in the peak of summer heat, not everybody would go swimming in the North. For bathing were chosen favourite ponds: there are splashing kids, over there are adults. Boys and girls swim by taking turns or in different places because they jump into the water completely naked. Only a married couple could bathe together and away from human eyes.
In the summer, one of the favourite activities of adolescents was bathing the horses. But swimming is not a substitute for a bath; the bath is good at any time of year and in any weather. If, of course, the bathhouse was well built, with an excellent stone-oven heater, and if the bather wasn't too stingy with time, firewood and water.

* INSEPARABLE PAIR*

The labour cycle of peasant life is inseparable from the everyday life cycle. The year goes hand in hand with an inseparable pair: the way of life and nature. This inseparability is the main difference between rural life and city life. But nature, or rather the weather, endowed with the inconsistency of women, does not always behave by the folk calendar. With a girl's playfulness, she either jumps ahead or, with the slowness of pregnant, stays behind for a week and sometimes two. And the Russian peasant accepted such whims with a chivalrous geniality, patiently aligned to its whimsical rhythm. However, in Russia's North quirks, the weather does not often exceed acceptable, and N.A. Nekrasov had a right to say: "There is no ugliness in nature ..."
    Due to the Orthodox calendar, county holidays served not only fun and rest. They bore into the life of the organizing principle, organized labour element, and were milestones, benchmarks of spiritual and moral life. Time for feats to feast, up from a Lent to another Lent, from one type of work to another kind of work measured in weeks.
But what is the starting point for the annual holiday cycle? You can assume that it begins with the New Year.
For the natural character of peasant life to break this circle is more appropriate at the junction of Shrovetide and the Great Lenten weeks. Why is it so? Because this period was not burdened by compulsory works, the boundary between Shrovetide and the Lenten was quite sharp and definite.
After the unbridled frolicking of Shrovetide, as if ashamed of the offence, life rolls into a conventional, even somewhat austere rut. Most women in whose hands were the reins of the household began to prepare for Communion. This meant that, willy-nilly, everybody else will fast too, at least in food. Not for nothing is composed a proverb: "What wife does not like that her husband will not eat." But this opinion was not often taken into account, although the Lenten was for the benefit of everyone in terms of health. (A cleansing period, change of nutrition for a plant-based food richer in vitamins).
Hypocrisy was just a sham pretending to fast, feigned religiosity when going to church "just in case," or just to avoid looking like a black sheep. Undoubtedly, many men fasted quite sincerely.
    On the last day of Shrovetide, the lady of the house put away all animal-based food. Children were allowed to eat up the rest of the meat and dairy foods. The bath would be prepared. Having settled down physically and spiritually, people would greet the Pure Monday. The youth stopped for some time carolling and singing.
The beginning of the Great Lent is connected to one of the highest age-old traditions of spiritual beauty. It is performed mainly by women. Men were much rarely initiators and executors of the ritual. But the charm and power of a good cause are so enormous that everybody was affected by its magnetic field, even the evilest people.
 Anfisa Ivanovna tells how, before walking to confession, she tried to remember everyone whom she secretly or openly insulted in the past year, exchanging insults and quarrels ...
Leaving the house, in turn, people appealed to all at home with a sincere request for forgiveness for Christ's sake. To this end, whoever they contacted, almost always answered with the same sense of remorse.
Extinguishing family strife's, people were trying to remember and a village-level: "Oh, oh, I called a fool Kuzmich last fall," she recalled." So, she got to Kuzmich. In response to the traditional: "Forgive me, I am a sinner!" - Should have answered: "God will forgive." If sin were considered very big, the person would bow to the feet or get up on their knees. It turned out the more robust and greater reconciliation was then, the lighter felt "the heart" for both. The final release of soul heaviness occurred yet in the church and after the church service. Thus began the most prolonged, seven-week Lent - the time from Shrovetide to the Bright Sunday.
 The days are getting warmer and longer. Spring is coming. How can one explain that birds, animals, children and even many adults are so fond of this intermediate state of the water when it simultaneously melts and freezes? The first gold drops from the nook in the snow barely emerged, the first puddle at the eaves nearly rolled down, and a resilient sparrow is already right here. And it dives straight into the water. Bristling feathers shake off. Almost with the same enthusiasm, the kids clear the snow, break with boots heels of March crust, knock with sticks the icicles from the roofs and bite if it is candy. Such a peculiar "Communion" with nature, preceded for a young soul the Church Communion, when the child is given a spoon with the holy gifts, and when the sound of the solemn singing of the priest to publicly pronounce the full name of the child. Seriousness and thoroughness get into a child's soul by itself, naturally and unobtrusively.
 A child does not have to remember an omen like this: on which week of the Lent needles falls from the pines, the same week by the number after Easter, you start sowing. But at the pivot of the Lent, in other words, on the mid-Lenten week, on Thursday, women bake ordinary dough crosses, and one of them inside has a bronze cross. That one, who picks that cross in the spring, will throw the first handful of seeds during sowing. But, of course, if he got the cross, the child waits impatiently for sowing time, and adults will never forget about this promise.
A week before Easter, on Palm Sunday, the adults consecrated in the church bundles of twigs (plain willow or silver willow), covered with silver "lambs." Willow twigs adorned the shrine in each house; such a twig was used to drive the cattle for the first time out of the barn onto the street.
 For the Russian peasant, Easter Sunday was the most significant holiday, the most solemn and joyful day in the year. The night of Easter Eve was also grand and sleepless for most parishioners. It was dedicated to the all-night church service. If, during the procession, the water freezes under the feet, then to the full triumph of spring is to happen no less than forty's mornings, in other words, the late spring. On Easter morning, people break the fast, kiss each other, many exchanges painted eggs. Throughout the following week, the priests go from house to house. On this occasion, new towels were hung on the walls, on the table spread a special tablecloth and garnered a special wooden bowl with rye grains. In those bowls right in the grain were stuck icons. On the tablecloth was put one pie and one round bread.
On the day of Saint George, the cattle were blessed, and all this was accompanied by thousands of specific details, sayings, omens. For example, it was not allowed to break off the birch twigs for brooms before the Trinity holiday. Before the Trinity day, the streets in the villages were decorated with whole rows of felled birch, which stood at the house for several days.
Trinity was the most cheerful, a half spring, a half summer beer festival. Everything is fresh, green, days are long, nights are light, the grass is the youngest, not hard and not dusty, the air is dry but not hot, mosquitoes and gnats are very few.
The week before, the Apostle Peter's Lent adults and young men had the custom to roll chicken eggs from the inclined trays. Some lucky players used to win a few dozen eggs. During Apostles Peter and Paul Lent, all such fun was again stopped. As a warning or a punishment for the people and animals, nature keeps in-store at this time the clouds of every bloodsucker possible: a microscopic, at night barely visible midge, horseflies in the afternoon, mosquitoes in the evening.
The proximity of nature to daily life was so mundane, so close, that in some cases, led us to believe that a driving force is not a man but nature itself. For example, it is tough to dissuade a reaper that "cutting" grass in the rye does not grow accidentally. Nevertheless, the woman is convinced of the justice of nature. She thinks that "cutting" grass grows just if somebody cuts himself. The same applies to many natural phenomena: a custom is so native, ancient, and looks like a work of nature itself.
The summer harvest weeks did not look too hard if the weather was dry. There was time to reap and mow, plow, sow, thresh, and brew beer. Young people have figured out ways to enjoy the white nights of Virgin of Tikhvin, St. Peter's day, Virgin of Kazan, Midsummer Night holidays.
    During the summer, a lot of water flows away under the bridge. One love is forgotten, another will grow stronger. Grooms and brides will emerge only in autumn and finalize at the Baptism day (January 19) to celebrate a wedding in time, before the Great Lent (Baptism Day - the girls' decision deadline).
On Eliya's day - the last summer holiday - the day shadow "is due to get out of the bushes," nights grow darker and more prolonged. ("The horse ate till full, Cossack slept till dull.”)
If there are no relatives, no friends in the holiday village, you can refresh yourself on the way back with wild berries. However, wild strawberries, for example, at this time are not eaten. It is said that it was licked by the frog. Apples cannot be eaten before the Savior Macovei, before the blessing them in the church, where other fruits were also brought in to be blessed. Before the Assumption day again, people were fasting for two weeks. The night of that feast was already quite dark, walking in the street without seeing and recognizing each other by voice and tone of harmonicas.
The annual system of holidays and almost every day of the week were firmly linked, "normalized" with nature and the labour cycle. (This connection goes to the pre-Christian pagan times.) Therefore, the celebration was as much a natural necessity as work. This need did not depend on material wealth. Even in the most impoverished house, the village holiday is marked with the same diligence as in other places. The poorest also invited guests to the house. A rich guest at a poor family house had to behave just like at a wealthy home. Their behaviour in such conditions showed their mind and soul.
The end of fieldwork was considered a holiday, as the beginning of sowing. The lady of the house harvests on the strip the last sheaf and brings it home. All those who participated in the harvest thrust their sickles into the bunch and put it in the front corner. It was prepared and eaten a special end-of-harvest dish (Salamat).
 The sheaf stood under the icon till the Intercession of Blessed Virgin Mary day. In the morning of the holiday, the host or hostess carried a sheaf to the barn; there, it was untied and gave a morsel to every beast, saying: "Father Intercession, overfeed cattle with health." There are composed of many proverbs about Intersession Day. ("Father Intersession, cover the house with warmth, the master with the goods, the land with snow, the lady of the house with pie, a young girl with the groom…)."
 A few weeks of late autumn and winter also were dedicated to Lent. It is called the Filippov's Lent and lasts until Christmas. On Christmas Eve, religious people should not eat from dawn to dusk. Boys and girls ran in the morning on the street with a juicy cheese pie, making a wish and observing who they first met. Laughter was the case when a vigorous bridegroom came across to meet a toothless old woman, and a young girl met a neighbour's gelding, peacefully wandering to drink water. Laughter with laughter, but people began in haste to engage with proposals from that day. Those who did not have time to get married before Shrovetide remained single.

**FOOD ON THE TABLE **

 The Northern Russian Peasant cuisine is not explained solely by climatic conditions, not by the environment, but also by the structure of everyday life. Therefore the concept of "national cuisine" certainly has an artistic side.
  Russian peasants, depending on Lents, divided meals on Lenten meals (which means abstaining from foods that contain animals with red blood (meats, poultry, game) and products from animals with red blood (milk, cheese, eggs, etc.), and fish and seafood with backbones. Vegetable oil and wine are also restricted. The number of meals each day is also limited. Supported by the long people's experience, this diet alternation was limited, not only by religious duty. Change of seasons, local tradition and personal preferences were reasons to diversify the table. The hostess has never baked for two consecutive days, for example, the same dish. If today were cooked peas, she tried to cook mushrooms or something else the next day. The festive calendar cycle has also influenced the nature of the food. During the holidays, brewed wort (primarily for beer) and waste from cooking (Rye pellet) were used to prepare kvas. The peasant table entirely "grew up" on the mowing and tillage field strip. So, what grew on the field strip?

* * MEAT AND DAIRY**

 The connection of all the phenomena of work and life illustrates even such a primitive example. If the meat is on the table, not the mushroom soup, then there is a strength in the hands and feet, and if there is a strength, then more you will till the soil and mow. In such a case, there will be grain for themselves and straw and fodder and chaff for cattle, and if there are cattle, there will be soup with meat again. The circle is closed ...
    However, it is closed on a higher level: on the table, for example, would not be only cabbage and meat soup but oatmeal, and this, in turn, gives more strength, which let people work better and faster, so they can have free time from fieldwork and go foraging.
Where do people go in the fall when there is free time? First, of course, they go into the woods to pick mushrooms and berries. Thus, a good meat soup entails other, also nutritious but not the main fare. The abundance of meat and dairy foods depends entirely on the arable field's success and hay meadow.
    For lazy, it was advantageous to be superstitious, they say, the cattle are not becoming to the yard. But it was rather not because the hay was dusty, but because the owner is too lazy to shake it because he would take extra oats without hesitation to the fair, while at the strong household, oats will be left for the horses. Either way, the cattle in some homes did not take root, litter have been weak and small, one failure necessarily followed by another.
    Probably, to work with animals,s you need exceptional talent, associated with love for all bellowing, neighing, bleating, grunting, and clucking. Those who during the morning sleep frowns from mooing cows or pulling on a blanket on her head because of the cock's singing will not be good farmers. Even an animal whisperer will not help them.
During summer and fall, the cattle got fat, and with the first frost, the shepherd stopped taking cows to graze. The family council had to decide which animals and how many to let go through the winter. To save the hay with the first heavy frost in the country, cattle got decimated. Nothing beautiful in this scene ... Many women could not tolerate the view of slaughter. Some men drove the children away, while others taught children to the sight of blood. Meat carcasses hung on the poles (higher from cats) and froze. The meat was cut off periodically in winter, and between the fasts were cooked daily soups.
    When a substantial thaw came, the meat had to be pickled in tubs. Meat in brine was not even during the hay harvest a preferred meal.
Beef in the Northern peasant household was preferred to lamb. Almost everything was used. The skins are stored with salt or just made a sheepskin from it. The skin of the calf was used for making boots. The hostess washed in the river intestines of the slaughtered animal up to five times, of which was prepared excellent food, not to mention the liver. The feet and the animal's head were fired on coal and stored for the holidays for cooking jellied meat.
    Meat jelly was a traditional snack on holidays, but it was gulped with kvas for the usual dinner table. A vast iron pot in which cooked meat jelly was taken out from the oven in the evening before the holiday. It was always a sweet moment, especially for children. While the mother (or grandmother) was poured on the dishes liquid broth and cut the content, we could eat cartilage and bone marrow. Children received bones - items for their games, girls were given the ankles bones, and the boys - knees with great delight. Unfortunately, there were not enough bones, so the turn was established, for St. Nikola some, on the day of the Assumption - the others.
 The hostess made of sheep innards lard, stored by cylinders in the chests. Cooked and fired with the lard potatoes served at the table in the morning or at lunch, after the cabbage soup, with added oat cereal. Crispy fried in fat lamb innards were called bacon bits. They are also reputed to be a delicacy, but drinking cold water after them was dangerous. Meat is eaten only in the jelly, in soup, minced and baked in pies. In many homes, if the beef didn't last till haymaking time, usually mutton or sheep were slaughtered in the summer amid a harvesting campaign. So the fresh cabbage soup was cooked twice, and the rest of the meat dried in a hot oven and stored in rye flour. Soup from a dried lamb takes on an entirely different taste.
For those engaged in hunting - hare, grouse and hazel grouse were unavailable only in the spring and early summertime. At this time, the hunters tried to restrain their ardour.
More extensive and complex is the tradition of women's approach toward dairy. In terms of importance, calving was tantamount to such events as the Patron's feast day, moving to a new house, the arrival of the boat-haulers. The hostess knew the time of calving up to three or four days precision; she kept walking into the pen around this time. The expecting cow was visited at night, and if this event were going to happen just about, the whole household would stay awake. The first few days, milk was milked only for the calf. But now, the milk pail is cooked, washed, dried, and inserted a sprig of juniper in the mouth. Brought in and roasted a couple of dozen clay jugs (for some reason, they called "kashniks"). A cat with a loud mewing meets the mistress, who is bringing into the house white-foamed liquid, this childish grace, the personification of health and family harmony.
Milk was used sparingly, and this underlies that only babies drank it. The others gulped it with spoons. As the proverb says, milk is slurped with the awl in the autumn. Milk was poured into a large communal bowl, in which it was crumbled rye bread, and the children ate it between meals as a supplement. Yogurt was eaten with bread crumbs, not only by children but also by others. Such a meal could be a third lunch dish. Sour milk, mixed with sour cream, was served less often because sour cream was supposed to be saved. Women were churning cream in unusual pots in the evenings, called "relics." After a long and very tedious churning appeared first clots mixture of raw butter. Gradually they huddled together in one chunk. Water was added into the pot, the liquid was poured out, and butter was melted in a warm oven. Then it was cooled. It turned as amber-coloured Russian melted butter.
 The remains after such melting called "podeniye" were used with potatoes, eaten with pancakes.
     With Kolyaka guy who "burned" the neighbour's bread happened once this story. When the house was empty, it came into his head to have some cream. So he got up and brought down the entire shelf with pots. Then, not knowing what to do, he enticed the cat. He put the cat's paw into the cream and printed traces on a bench and floor. And with peace of mind, he went outside to chop wood.
 In the evening, the mother clasped her hands: "Father, take a look at what the cat has done to us!" Father says: "No, mother, there's another cat was wandering." - "Which one!" - "A two-legged." Kolyaka lay behind the stove and kept quiet. On his coat froze a couple of inches of sour cream.
The skimmed yogurt was also put in a hot oven. It was ready cottage cheese and buttermilk in the evening, a pleasant sour drink. "Serum from the sour milk" - with the help of this tongue-twister, students trained pronunciation. Cottage cheese was kept in a wooden dish. It was brought to the hayfield in birch-bark baskets with a double wall in the summer. They also used to keep kvas and wort. Cottage cheese was also eaten with milk with a spoon, sour milk, pies and pretzels.
A pitcher of milk every day was put in the oven. This is called "fried" milk. Adults have added it to the tea. The children could directly feast on this delicacy. When cows stopped milking, milk for children was borrowed from the neighbours. The number of lent pitchers etched on the particular splinter. The hostess, giving a loan, also sometimes put sticks. Numbers have not always been the same: borrowers for reliability and disgrace often put extra, "insurance" nicks ...
    In the winter, people applied some strange way to store milk. First, milk was frozen in the dish, and then the ice dairy circles were knocked out and kept in the cold. Such milk could be sent to relatives and taken for the road. It rattled in the bags along with other luggage.