Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1884 — Agricultural Life in Siberia. [ARTICLE]

Agricultural Life in Siberia.

Supplementing recently published extracts from the journal of the Russian Minister of Finance as to the agriculture of Siberia, M. Yermolaieff has written a very interesting description of the way in which the settlers from other parts of Russia who come to farm there live. The whole family lives in a small room decorated with copper images and colored engravings of the late war with Turkey. This room is at once a chapel, a bedroom, and a dining room. A second room is reserved for provisions, and the settlers, as a rule, live well, their staple dishes being fish prepared with butter and milk, though they occasionally have meat and gamer There is always a bath, a cellar, and a stable attached to the house, and a kitchen garden around it. Taking a family with which he is acquainted, and which consists of a father and two grown-up sons, M. Yermolaieff says: “The mother has just died, and the two sons help their father—one in the house and the garden, the other upon the land. They make a considerable sum by gathering wild raspberries, currants, and cherries, which they dry and sell, in some years making as much as 30 rubles. One of the two brothers spends the winter shooting, and makes good prices for the game, while the fish which is oaught in the summer is salted down for home consumption. The income of this family is about 250 rubles a year, and the total expenditure is certainly not more than 120 rubles.” Each farm has at the least ten milch cows, with about fifteen or twenty sheep and pigs, the size of the farms varying very little. The poultry yard generally contains some Cochin-China fowls, together with a few ducks and geese of the ordinary breeds.