* * 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.