Biointensive for Russia

831 Marshall Drive

Palo Alto, CA 94303-3614
February 3, 2005

Dear Friends,
At last we are taking time to write up some details of BfR’s achievements and setbacks in 2004. Despite not
receiving the major grant we had applied for, we’re happy to report that our partners are continuing to work steadily
to spread the GROW BIOINTENSIVE (GB) sustainable gardening method in Russia, Uzbekistan, and, now, the
border regions of Kazakhstan. One effort undertaken last spring was conducting an informal survey to obtain
approximate numbers of how many how many people have attended their lectures and demonstrations, among other
indices. We learned that since the mid-90s, approximately 6768 people have been taught in Russia and Uzbekistan
by the 15 active teaching partners that we surveyed!
The year began with the welcome visit to Palo Alto of Vladimir “Volodya” Loginov from Kurganinsk,
Russia, including participation in the Eco-Farm Conference, an enjoyable trip to New Mexico, contacts with local
Boy Scouts, an ecogarden tour of Santa Cruz, and talks presented in New Mexico and our SF Peninsula. Accounts
of these events were sent to our email list and included in our summer 2004 newsletter (see pp. 1&2). We plan to
include Volodya’s article “The Russian Gardening Year” in another list message, as well as in our upcoming
Garden Companion and on the website. What went unreported is that during Volodya’s visit we began a monthly
Russian conversation evening at my home. This is ongoing, so please send anyone our way who may benefit!
During the spring we also conducted the above-mentioned survey, and collaborated via email with Igor
Prokofiev and his Web-savvy partner Andrei in Bryansk, to support their efforts to set up a Russian-language
website for BfR. Their delightful product is up for all to see at http://www.biointensive.newmail.ru We hope to
cooperate very soon with Igor in adding more material to the Russian site, as well as updating the English one.
BfR is an apolitical humanitarian project, whose mission is simply to benefit Russians as well as Americans
in an exchange of ecogardening and other sustainable living experience. However, Director Carol (yours truly)
holds liberal/ progressive views (as those on my “political” email list are well aware), and I became involved during
2004 in giving house parties, letterwriting, and precinct walking for the Kerry campaign. Due to these diversions
and our time spent grantwriting, editing our newsletter, and handling family matters, no more mini-fundraisers were
held after March in 2004. But in spring 2005 we do plan to hold a slide show, an evening party, a small plant
sale, and a Central Asia cultural evening.
Longtime IT volunteer Shoshana Billik, in a career transition from computer work (at NASA) to Eurasia-
related work, spent much of the summer in Irkutsk, Siberia studying Russian. After her eight-week immersion
course was over, Volodya Loginov joined her for travel to Ulan Ude, Severobaikalsk, and Novosibirsk. In the fall,
Shoshana returned to Russia to spend five weeks working with schools for the disabled in Ryazan' on a USAID-
sponsored IREX internship, which included a press conference and meeting with the US ambassador. She then
traveled south to visit Volodya in Kurganinsk, and was treated to a three-day car tour with northern Caucasus
environmentalist Andrei Rudomakha and Volodya to Maikop (capital of the Adygei Autonomous Republic), the
Bolshoi Utrish nature reserve, and Novorossiisk and Anapa on the Black Sea.
Back to summer: during July, with help from Celinda Miller, Bakhtiyar Jollikbekov, Amanda Kovattana, Igor
Prokofiev, Irina Kim, Albina Kochegina, Volodya Loginov, Jill Clay, and others, we edited and mailed out another
of our paper newsletters, The Garden Companion. That issue featured arid Biointensive gardening in the
Chihuahua and Kyzylkum deserts; the teaching and research activities of five of our partners in Nukus
(Karakalpakstan) and Nuratau and Brichmulla, Uzbekistan and several locations in western Russia; and our efforts
to apply for FRAEC/USAID support for workshops in the Russian Far East. The newsletter can be downloaded in
PDF from our homepage http://biointensiveforrussia.igc.org; we also have paper copies to send if you’ll send the
address of someone who could take an interest in supporting our work.

650 856-9751 • cvesecky@igc.org

http://biointensiveforrussia.igc.org • http://www.biointensive.newmail.ru
Page 2

We also worked with Irina Kim in July to apply to the Sonoma County-based foundation C.S. Fund for a
grant of $10,000, to enable her to promote the status of the living soil as a "living organism" worthy of legal
protection in Central Asia. This will be done by creating an interregional network of of legislators,
environmentalists, journalists, scholars, students, and teachers in Uzbekistan, leading hopefully to another grant
year during which the concept will be extended to other Central Asian republics. During the fall, we received word
that the grant had been awarded, so we’re VERY happy about that. Unfortunately there are bureaucratic obstacles
that are delaying Irina’s receiving the funds, but we trust these will be overcome by spring.
Also in July, we corresponded with a farming teacher based in Lubbock, Texas who has taught in many
countries, Ken Hargesheimer, as he prepared to travel to Nukus to teach no-till farming to the farmers there for the
Center Perzent. This was Ken’s first trip to the New Independent States. En route, he got acquainted with Irina Kim
and her daughter at the Tashkent airport. Later we helped two teachers from Perzent apply for Ecology Action’s
November 3-Day Workshop, but they were unable to attend due to lack of funding.
In August, we moved on to work intensively with new and old partners in Komosomolsk-on-Amur and
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in the Russian Far East, and Bryansk in Western Russia, to apply to the USAID-funded
Foundation for Russian-American Economic Cooperation (FRAEC) for $70,000 for a program including GB,
passive solar greenhouse design, and small-scale organic farming workshops, demonstration gardens, support
centers, consultation services, and a website. Steve Moore and Michael Olson were prepared to teach workshops,
and our new friends at Taiga Rangers and Sakhalin Initiatives would have coordinated activities in Khabarovsk and
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk respectively. Igor Prokofiev and Dr. Ludmila Zhirina of Viola would have helped teach, do
Web work, and coordinate consultations with US and former Soviet GB mini-farmers. Sadly for our project,
competition was fierce, and we lost out again. It seemed tragic to us and our various US advisers that such a good
proposal (much better than last year’s!) would be turned down, and that a project enabling people to grow healthful
food be given such a low priority.
BfR’s website was updated in August with the help of Tamara Kowalski and Berta Pires. The site is now
overdue for another revision, and we’re looking forward to updating the Russian photos. Incidentally, Tamara
volunteers for another excellent Eurasia cause, the Center for Safe Energy in Berkeley, and Berta has landed an
internship at NASA. But fortunately, they’re both still willing to find time to volunteer for BfR!
I returned to campaign work and family in the fall, along with continuing the ongoing BfR correspondence,
and took a trip to the Eastern US in November. I visited my brother and his wife in Virginia (where I hobnobbed
with high-level educators visiting from Siberia), my son in Manhattan, and dear friends in Pittsburgh. A delightful
side trip took me to volunteer translator Erin Wood’s and her husband’s new Biointensive CSA, Englandwood
Farm, near Charlottesville, VA, also reuniting with a childhood friend in the area. In their first season, Erin and
Doug have already provided 13 families with weekly produce baskets and eggs. Doug is planning to start berry
farming, and is setting up a large hoophouse for the 2005 season. In urban Manhattan, my son Stephen and I
attended a marvelous anti-war play, "Svejk" (adapted from the post-WWI novel The Good Soldier Svejk, which we
highly recommend. On the weekend after Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, my daughter Holly and I visited a unique
water-conserving Mediterranean garden in Santa Monica, which will be described in our upcoming Garden
Companion.

Reports from our Eurasia partners

The news in the early summer from Albina Kochegina in St. Petersburg was bittersweet. The Alive Earth
Center, scene of many wonderful seasons of Biointensive and other horticultural experiments conducted by teenage
Young Naturalists, ceased to operate at its location near the Smolny Cathedral, and the garden and facilities were
moved. Albina also retired from teaching children, moving on to writing books on medicinal herbs and some
teaching of adults. We’ll pass on any news we receive about the continuation of GB teaching, either by the Young
Naturalists or by Albina. Back in the spring, Albina reported having taught 1655 children and adults over the years
since she attended the Ecology Action 3-Day Workshop in 1995!
Since 1999, Ludmila Zhirina and Igor Prokofiev of the NGO Viola have taught GB to over 1300 students
and dacha gardeners in their oblast’ (Bryansk). In fall 2004, with modest funding of $500 from BfR, Viola reached
out to neighboring Orel to teach two seminars to 182 people including faculty, students, and local political figures
at the city’s university. The seminars were hosted by the dean of the natural geography department and were
extremely well received. Along with Ludmila and Igor, the Viola team included Albina Samsonova, Oleg
Zavarzin, and Natalya Karyagina, all of whom have attended our 3-day workshops. The Viola group has been
asked to teach more seminars and also to write a school textbook on GB.

650 856-9751 • cvesecky@igc.org

http://biointensiveforrussia.igc.org • http://www.biointensive.newmail.ru
Page 3

Equally important has been the Biointensive experiment Viola members conducted in the area of their
oblast’ that was heavily contaminated by radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear accident, but where people still
need to grow food to survive. This was the third summer of experimentation supported by BfR (at $300-$500
annually), and it showed that double-digging and the use of compost significantly reduces the uptake of
radionuclides by the plants. Along with a report, Igor sent eight beautiful sets of photos of the extensive beds, four
to a page. Naturally, we would like to network with US-based researchers who would take an interest in Viola’s
results. If anyone reading this can think of any research collaboration leads for me, please let me know -- I’ll be
happy to attach to you the report and photos! Incidentally, Igor is fast approaching his goal of receiving his
kandidat (first PhD) degree in ecology, his research being on oil spill remediation, so we should have cause for
celebration soon!
We reported above and in the Companion on Volodya Loginov’s activities here last winter, and on his
traveling with and hosting of Shoshana in the summer and at year’s end. In early July he wrote that he was
continuing the finishing work on his house with the aid of three young apprentices. From the popcorn seeds brought
from Common Ground in Palo Alto, they grew enough popcorn to fill three buckets! (Popcorn is a recent
innovation in Russia.) He has also continued to grow wheat for sprouts, and is researching its use for making kvas,
the slightly fermented Russian beverage. During the summer he networked to find opportunities to teach Boy
Scouts, but so far no concrete plans have been laid. He continues to correspond with Scout leaders for the future.
Volodya has taught roughly 150 people over the years.
Irina Kim, who has taught about 2000 high school students and adults since 1996, has continued, with our
financial support, to take her HS student trainers to remote villages to conduct trainings. Her report is on page 4 of
our Summer 2004 newsletter (see http://biointensiveforrussia.igc.org). In July, Irina succeeded for the first time in
holding seminars in towns over the border in Kazakhstan, including at an agricultural college in Sariagash. As
mentioned above, with any luck she’ll receive a grant this year from the CS Fund to promote the “living soil” as an
entity deserving legal protection.
We have not heard again from Bakhtiyar Jollibekov or Rustam Arzykhanov (Nukus) or from Vera
Korsakova (Novosibirsk), but trust that Bakhtiyar’s and Rustam’s GB university-level programs continue, that
Bakhtiyar still experiments with his son Berdiyar at CAFÉ-Nukus, and that Vera and her sister Marina and
Marina’s husband in the Altai are still practicing and teaching GB.

Book Publication
A silver lining to the grant not being awarded lies in our having more time to devote to getting another book
out: Ekologicheskii ogorod (Ecological garden), the translation of The Sustainable Vegetable Garden by John
Jeavons and Carol Cox. We’re hoping it will be published in Moscow in time for use this growing season. St.
Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto has contributed $1000 to get the project rolling, and we’re committed to
raising at least another $1000 for the first printing. We’ve been negotiating a contract with longtime partner Sasha
Avrorin, who is now Executive Director of the Vozvrashchenie Literary and Historical Society in Moscow, to
arrange its publication. Sasha has done more editing, which I must check. From this end, I have made changes to
the growing instructions to make them easier to follow, which Sasha needs to translate. Following which, they must
be proofed here. We are currently planning for the book to be on sale in bookstores by June.

Outlook for the Future: an Ecotour?

Grants and other fundraising measures are one way to ensure that we continue to be able to support trainings
by our Eurasia network. We continue to be eager to consider any and all suggestions in those regards. For years,
Shoshana and I have been talking about the ecotour we’d like to plan together, collaborating with Global Exchange,
Mir Corporation, Baikal Watch at Earth Island Institute, and/or Sokol Tours. Originally we envisioned one to the
Russian Far East; Central Asia has been and continues to be another dream, and Lake Baikal/Irkutsk/Ulan Ude is
yet another. Now we agree we should add the northern Caucasus and Black Sea areas to the list! Any tour we
design, of course, will include Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the proceeds will support workshops coterminous
with sightseeing excursions and grassroots contacts.
If a reader is seriously interested in joining us on, or even co-designing with us, a potential ecotour
supporting GROW BIOINTENSIVE workshops, please do write and let us know which area you’d most like to
visit, or with a request for more detail on our own musings. We’ll add your vote and promise there will be no
miscounts…. (In view of our current priorities, such a tour is not likely to be planned before the fall of 2005, if that
soon.)

650 856-9751 • cvesecky@igc.org

http://biointensiveforrussia.igc.org • http://www.biointensive.newmail.ru
Page 4

Our Current Work and Needs

Our work is cut out for us this winter with the following projects. Along with doing some accounting analysis
so we can present you with a balance sheet to show you how effective your donation dollars have been (every
penny goes to program, believe me!), we are:
• Performing the final proofing and contract negotiations with Sasha Avrorin/Vozvrashchenie in Moscow for
publishing Ekologicheskii ogorod, a simplified introduction to GROW BIOINTENSIVE. The book will be sold
commercially, and also used by our partners in their teaching efforts. $1000 has already been contributed by St.
Mark’s; $1000-$2000 more is needed for a good print run
• Working together with Melanie Adcock at the CS Fund to ensure that the $10,000 grant gets past the Uzbek
“filter” to Irina Kim. Meantime, $500-$1000 or more would enable Irina to undertake workshop tours with
her students to remote villages this spring. A budget and more information are available on request.
• Discussing with our partners at Viola in Bryansk their plans for the coming season. They have in mind more
seminars in Orel, another experiment in their radiation-contaminated zone, and publishing projects. Of course,
we would also like to revive our shared dream of introducing GB in the Russian Far East!
- It would be wonderful if we could provide $1000 or more of funding for seminars and research, on the scale
of past years. Viola also has potential hosts in Daghestan, Smolensk, and other places.
- Naturally, we would like to network Viola with research organizations in the US to collaborate on the
radiation research. (Igor Prokofiev and I are investigating the possibility of applying for a grant from the
Scientific Cooperation Research Program of the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, and would welcome
mail from anyone with experience with, or interest in, this program.)
- A workshop could be taught by Ludmila Zhirina or Igor Prokofiev in Khabarovsk or Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
for $2000. Another $10,000 would support a workshop by Steve Moore there including some participant
travel; an additional $5,000 would enable Michael Olson to present small-scale agribusiness to an
overlapping group of participants.
Your donations at whatever level, and your suggestions for further fundraising, will be deeply appreciated.
From year-end member contributions (thank you, donors!!!) we have enough funds to cover the copying and
mailing costs of $300 for the upcoming newsletter. But for the above projects to be carried out, we’ll need ongoing
income.
Those of you on the paper mailing list have a return envelope in which to send in your tax-deductible
donation, however small. To become or remain a full-fledged member, helping support the programs send $20 or
more; to cover the mailing costs if you'd like to receive the paper newsletter $5 will help.
In order to qualify for tax deductibility, your check should be made out to “Ecology Action,” but sent to BfR,
831 Marshall Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303. If your name and address are included, we’ll send our warm thanks!
Hoping to hear back,
Happy garden planning for 2005,

Carol
Carol B. Vesecky
Director

650 856-9751 • cvesecky@igc.org

http://biointensiveforrussia.igc.org • http://www.biointensive.newmail.ru