I live in the middle of nowhere and depend on my husband. How life is for those who decide to go into the wilderness from urban civilization (7 photos). Psychiatrist Maryana Shadrina travels to work from Petrozavodsk to remote areas every day

Balalaika musician, businessman, actor, programmer, philologist professor, fashion model, deputy assistant... 79 families moved to deep forests Kaluga region to conduct a subsistence economy, raise children and build your own according to your own laws...

Balalaika musician, businessman, actor, programmer, philologist professor, fashion model, deputy assistant... 79 families moved to the deep forests of the Kaluga region to conduct subsistence farming, raise children and build their own according to their own laws. own world on an area of ​​one hundred hectares.

Townspeople

In the eco-village “Ark” there are no fences, a lot of free space, not a single house is similar to the neighboring one: log houses, adobe (made of clay and straw) and panel houses... The territory already occupies 80 hectares (one hectare for each family). Residents remember how surprised the officials who came here to check were: winter, snow, waist-deep snowdrifts - and a girl was pushing a stroller across an empty field, singing.

The Ark is connected to civilization only by electricity installed just two years ago. Birdhouse toilets instead of sewers, water from springs or recently dug wells, heat from stoves. Almost everyone has the Internet, but no TV: a satellite dish allows it, but why?

The city decides everything for the person,” says one of the founders of the village, Fyodor Lazutin, “they give you a warm, bright house, doctors take care of your health, and schools take care of your children’s education. You become dependent on the city. By moving to an eco-village, you regain responsibility for your life, home, children, for what you will eat and how you will live. The life that civilization offers us does not suit us. We must start with the basics: land, housing, food, children.

Former townspeople decided to return to the childhood of civilization. Almost no one had ever had to work on the land before. “I’m a northerner,” Fyodor laughs, “it was strange to me that apples grow on trees.”

The settler Oleg wanted to live on land since his youth. One day I came to my peasant grandfather: I’m staying with you, they say. “Get out of here,” the grandfather was indignant. “I didn’t bring your father into the public eye, I didn’t move you to the city so that you would return here.”

The average age of adult residents of the “Ark” is 35 years. The majority are Muscovites, half continue to earn money in the city: programmers - on the Internet, many - leaving for work, some rent out city apartments. But someone has already given up old job, earning money by building houses and selling honey. The settlers believe that a hectare of land is enough to feed a family and even sell the excess. A vegetable garden, an apiary, surrounded by a forest with mushrooms, berries and dead wood for firewood. In the future, it will be possible to grow flax and weave clothes, have pastures and raise cows.

100 hectares per world

Don’t be afraid, my bees don’t bite, that’s the breed. Here in the neighboring area - so there are some bull terriers there, not bees - says Fyodor Lazutin, a molecular biologist and businessman in the past, director of the non-profit partnership "Ark" and author of a book on beekeeping in the present, quickly walking along the path between the hives. The bees buzz around my head indignantly, clearly planning to ruin their reputation.

The Ark began with Fedor, although he denies this. Seven years ago, four families who were planning to move to the land met on the Internet (others were looking for girls there) and together they found an empty plot in the Kaluga region. There, future settlers were allocated 120 hectares of abandoned agricultural land to create a world organized according to their own rules.

The same laws apply in the village as in the country, plus a ban on alcohol, smoking, killing animals (although not everyone in the village is vegetarian), the use of chemical fertilizers and hazardous industries.

The issue of land ownership was posed as strictly as possible: everything was owned by a non-profit partnership consisting of 79 people (one from each family). If a person decides to leave, he will not be able to sell his land, but will receive money for the house built on it. This is how the settlement protects itself from strangers and bad neighbors: if a person doesn’t fit, he can be expelled, but this almost never happened. For example, one of the residents prevented everyone from using the road through the village, claiming that there was a “place of power” on it. Several people left on their own.

The main criterion for selecting new settlers for the residents of the Ark: do you want to see this person as a neighbor? Additional ones are the relationship between words and deeds (too many are ready to move only in words) and the willingness to do something for the village, nature and the world.

Ecovillage is an example of democracy. There is no single leader. We wanted individuals to come to us, they say in the Ark, and not those who need to be led. All decisions are made by a general vote of representatives of each family. For example, in order for a newcomer to be accepted into the village, 75% need to vote for him. Most of the competitions do not pass, and almost all of the sites are already filled.

People

God created man in his own image and likeness. This means that God created man as a creator,” says programmer Sergei. - The position of a person who has returned to earth is the position of God, who begins to create his world.

Sergei eco-settled (as they say here) at the same time as Fedor. Over the years, he learned to build houses, raise bees and play the harp, married a lonely eco-village, Katya, and delivered babies himself.

It is impossible to find a common denominator for the settlers. Everyone is too different: some play the balalaika and wear linen shirts, some philosophize, some sit in the lotus position. Some live in tents, others have a Jacuzzi in their house. Arguing for rural life, some talk about biofields and connections with space, others talk about sick children in the city. Many came having read Vladimir Megre’s books about the taiga hermit Anastasia, who calls for natural life; some had not read them until now.

According to settlers, the majority of past life They made good money and made a career. “If a person is running from something, he will not stay here,” says Fedor. - We take those who come “to”, not “from”. If a person, explaining why he came to us, says “I don’t want...”, he will not stay: we cannot give him what he does not want.”

Oleg Malakhov, an actor at the School of Dramatic Art, and his wife Lena came to Kovcheg six years ago and received a field with four pegs. “After all our dorms, rooms, moving, we see all this space and understand: it is ours,” says Lena.

In the dressing room of the theater, Oleg often, to tease his colleagues, talks about how he digs a pond and plants potatoes. But he doesn’t invite you to visit: “My house is too most of me to let strangers in.”

...The bright-red fashion model Anya was the face of a cosmetics brand and starred for the Channel One screensaver. After the birth of her daughter, she was given four months to get back in shape and return to work. Instead, Anya and her husband Anatoly, a former big businessman, went to the forests and gave birth to a second daughter. “A child in the city starts to get hysterical,” she explains.

...There is no door in Nina's house. On Sunday morning, in the rain, ankle-deep in the sodden ground, I wander around a log house made of thick logs, feeling the extreme absurdity of the situation.

Here! - Nina’s head appears from the hole under the house. “We haven’t cut the door yet, otherwise the logs will move.” That's how we live.

Music teacher, domrist Nina and her son live in the “Ark” permanently, her husband, balalaika player Andrei, goes to Moscow to earn money.

It’s good for me when there are friends around, when my son grows up independent, when I can do what I love not for the sake of earning money,” says Nina. - City friends ask: how do you like it in the village? Hammock, pool, flower beds? No, I say, vegetable gardens, construction and a bathhouse once every ten days. But here I can sit in the kitchen for hours, chatting, looking out the window. And it seems that everything necessary and important is happening to me. And in the city, even if I’m running errands, it always seems like time is wasted.

Sects please don't worry

Three years ago there was an empty field here, and in Common house(in the center of the village) there were people with sparkling eyes, euphoric about what they wanted to do, recalls eco-villager Sasha. - Now the emotions have subsided, people really look at things.

Over the past 20 years, several thousand settlements have been removed from the register in the Kaluga region. Only one new one appeared, under Orphanage"Kitezh". If you're lucky, the Ark will be second.

For seven years, Fedor has been collecting documents so that “Kovcheg” is officially recognized as a village. Recently they were transferred to Legislative Assembly Kaluga region.

Officials - normal people and secretly hope that everything will work out for us,” says Fedor. However, the status of the settlement is not yet clear, like many of the dozens of eco-villages throughout Russia, from the Moscow region to Krasnoyarsk Territory They are afraid of ecovillages. Oleg Malakhov recalls how he got into a conversation with new actress in your theater:

We’re sitting in the dressing room, and I’m chatting: house, construction site, garden beds. She starts asking what kind of settlement it is, who lives, how they got there. And in her eyes there is a pitiful, pitiful expression.

IN Lately gurus frequented the Ark. Scientologists, Hare Krishnas, Hindus, Radnovers, followers of Norbekov, Sinelnikov, Sviyash... “Well, we listen to them: our people are all polite, they won’t drive us away,” the settlers say and explain: what unites us does not lie in the sphere of religion or spiritual practices. “We don’t ask new settlers what they believe in,” says Fedor, “we simply offer them life according to principles that are different from the generally accepted ones.”

WITH local residents The relationship was not easy at first. “A sect,” they unanimously decided when they saw how people in city clothes were coming to the “Ark.” The settlers created their own choir. They traveled around the surrounding villages singing folk songs. Somehow I had to perform in a military unit. The entrance was guarded by a soldier. He looked at the women in folk clothes, approached, and whispered fearfully:

And you are Baptists, right? We were warned.

Who are Baptists? - Oleg asked.

I don’t know,” the soldier honestly admitted, “but they told us they were bad.”

Children

In seven years, 12 children were born in the settlement (there are more than forty in total). Most are at home, without doctors. They also study in the settlement: lessons are held in the Common House all year round. Anya, originally from Volga Germans, teaches German to children, Nina leads music, Oleg - acting. Schools and universities prepare people for life in the city, they say.

...One day workers arrived at the “Ark” and brought building materials. They stopped by the road, smoked, and waited for their owners. And suddenly children begin to approach from all sides. They approach with caution, stand silently, and look. The workers also look around, nervous.

Check this out. Smoking guys,” one of the children finally exhales.

Some parents force their children to take exams in regular schools, external Others don't. “Children who study at home easily adapt to school,” says Nina. “For them it’s a game: sit in one place, sit down and stand up on command... They play it, but ordinary schoolchildren don’t know that it could be different.”

Settlers call their homes family estates. Whether the family will survive for at least two generations remains to be seen.

Common Home

On Saturday evening in the Common House there is a concert of Indian music: an old settler with an Orthodox beard and an Indian cap arrives in a “Victory” car, sits on the table, plays the sarod. About twenty listeners are sedately dozing on the floor. On the terrace there is a list of concerts and seminars scheduled for the whole week. “They often ask me at the theater: what are you doing there in your village? - Oleg laughs. “Well, I explain: concerts, a choir, English and German courses, I myself lead a plastic group, a children’s theater... They don’t understand!”

The common house was built first, when the settlement itself did not yet exist. They built it not only to live themselves, but so that everyone could express themselves and it would become clear who would stay. “Our people” were immediately visible: those who really wanted to live eco-villages “happily grabbed their hammers.”

The ecovillage seems like a utopia. A world created according to its own rules and only for its own. The “we” that is more familiar to dystopias sounds here completely seriously: “If in the morning we got together to build a house, in the evening we can already cover the roof.”

“Giving up everything and moving to an ordinary village is not for me,” says Nina. “And here I saw the people I was going to, and I knew that I was moving to my own.”

“I have no more strength. If you don’t help, the only thing left to do is hang himself,” the desperate man said on the phone male voice. A father of many children was driven into a corner

It’s hard to imagine how it was necessary to convince Nikolai Mikhnyuk, who was resilient and had already experienced many sorrows, to decide to make such a call. He is not afraid of difficulties. I’m ready to move mountains if only everything is fine for the children. He lives for the sake of his children. He has eight of them. The youngest, Masha, is only ten years old. In March it will be four years since they were left without their mother. And their lives turned upside down.

An oasis in the midst of ruin

The Mikhnyuk farm, 60 kilometers from Rzhev, is like an oasis in the devastation of the post-apocalypse. The asphalt road, along which a bus from the regional center passes once a day, is two kilometers away. The village where they live has long been turned into a farm. There's no one around. Once upon a time there were two streets and several dozen houses in the village. Dairy plant. Club. School. Now the only reminders of the past are the pillars that suddenly appear in the middle of the dense forest that swallowed the former village. People sometimes wander along the disappeared street wild boars. In winter, wolves sometimes howl nearby. Three more houses are inhabited in the village. Two of them are home to retired bachelors who disappear somewhere for months at a time. On the third day, a woman from the city comes for the summer.

Nikolai near the house Photo: Stanislava Novgorodtseva for TD

The house, which the family inherited from a lonely old woman, will soon celebrate its centenary and has long been recognized as unsafe. But he doesn’t show it. Looks strong and well-groomed. Adjacent to the house is an old barn where goats live. There is a second one next to the main house. It looks just as strong. But Nikolai says that this is a summer kitchen without a foundation, which he and his sons built from scraps of wood from a sawmill. Inside there is a kitchen, a TV, a sofa and a large table where everyone loves to gather. In the red corner next to the icons is a large portrait of my mother. Clean, cozy and smells like cheesecakes. “My wife loved order and taught me and the children to see joy, not routine, in everyday chores,” says Nikolai. “She knew how to look optimistically at the simplest things and find the positives in everything. We live in the wilderness, not in the dirt.”

Large family

The first to greet the guests is the good-natured, shaggy Funtik, a dog with a difficult fate. IN early childhood he was dragged out of the yard by a rabid raccoon. The puppy was barely saved. And all the residents of the farm, both two-legged and four-legged, came to receive preventive injections. Local raccoons have carried chickens more than once and turned out to be not at all as cute and harmless as in the videos.

Funtik has a holiday on Fridays. Children are returning from the city who study at Rzhev College and live in a dormitory during the week. The house is getting noisy and smelly again. delicious food. On weekdays, the village is inhabited by dad Nikolai, the eldest son, 25-year-old Kolya, and the youngest, everyone’s favorite Masha. Dad's copy. With the same sly squint and long eyelashes.

From left to right: Kolya, Masha, Nikolai, Seryozha and Anton watch the film Photo: Stanislav Novgorodtsev for TD

The two eldest sons, Ivan and Vova, grew up and went to work in Moscow. They rarely appear in the village. Ksyusha and Nadya have been studying in Rzhev to become hairdressers for three years now. Sergey and Anton, after ninth grade, went to study to become welders in the fall. The choice of professions in Rzhev is small, and Nikolai cannot afford to teach children far from home. The girls study well and receive a gigantic scholarship - 452 rubles per month.

While Anna was alive, the main care of the house and children was hers. The main income comes from it. Nikolai worked a lot. Why, the Mikhnyuks were never afraid of work. We counted on ourselves. Both have golden hands. And they just chuckled when the next person they met asked: “Don’t you know how to protect yourself?” They were asked this question dozens of times with different intonations: curiosity, indignation, irony, anger.

Without mom

On that terrible day, March 7, 2015, Nikolai was working in Moscow, at the construction of a tunnel. A confused Vova called: “Dad, mom is really bad.” Nikolai rushed to call Anna. She barely whispered that she didn’t feel well, but even then she optimistically promised that everything would be fine. A few hours later, Vova called again and said in a dejected voice that my mother was not breathing. Nikolai rushed about, figuring out how to get out of Moscow late in the evening. The last bus to Rzhev has already left. The head of the station muttered dissatisfiedly that Mikhnyuk could have finished his shift, so why rush now. Nikolai got to Volokolamsk and realized that there would be no transport towards the house until the morning. He rushed onto the highway to the traffic police patrol: “Help me get to the children.” They stopped the ride.

“If I were at home, I would take her to the city, carry her in my arms.” The children called an ambulance and called a paramedic from the nearest paramedic station. The paramedic was gone for a long time. The ambulance arrived many hours later, when all that remained was to record death from heart failure. Anna was only forty.

Nikolai and the dog Funtik Photo: Stanislav Novgorodtseva for TD

Nikolai quit his job and returned to the village, to his children. I tried to find at least some work in the area. In vain. No prospects. In the ten years that the Mikhnyuks have been living in their village, there has been no work at all in the district. The state farm, pig farm, sawmill, and charcoal production, where Nikolai worked with his eldest sons, were closed. All attempts by visiting entrepreneurs to build either a poultry farm or a cowshed end in failure. For three years, the Mikhnyuks have been eating from the garden, and their only income is a survivor's pension. Large well-kept area. Greenhouses, greenhouses, ridges. Paths, flower beds, gazebo. Like trees straight out of paintings. Fairy tale. From which Nikolai dreams of leaving so as not to lose his children. The biggest headache is the school, which you can’t get to.

Give it to a boarding school

The first adventures with a school bus began back in 2014. At that time there were five schoolchildren in the family. The smartly dressed guys went to the bus stop on the morning of September 1st. But the bus didn't come. There was no bus the next day and the next week. Anna called the school and the head of the district, asked, demanded, cursed, begged. The answer was short: “We consider it inappropriate to make a stop at your village.” Let the children live in a boarding school. To pick up the children, the bus had to make a detour of five kilometers. The school was ready to lose five of its thirty students so as not to change the route. Anna wrote to television in desperation, and a few days later an NTV film crew appeared in the district head’s office. The bus was returned.

Ksyusha braids Masha's hair Photo: Stanislava Novgorodtseva for TD

After missing three weeks, the children returned to school. First Vova graduated from school, then Nadya and Ksyusha. Every year Nikolai had to fight for a school bus and the right of children to study at school and live at home in their family. The death of their mother united them even more. In the spring of 2018, Sergei and Anton graduated from ninth grade and entered college. There is only one schoolgirl left in the family - the youngest Masha. Nikolai was told back in May what to expect next academic year It’s pointless to take the bus: definitely no one will pick up one child. It’s worth stopping resisting and sending the girl to a boarding school for five days. Like, nothing will happen to her and her braids will be no worse than yours.

Break the vicious circle

Nikolai categorically did not want to send his daughter to a boarding school. But you can’t leave your child without school either. That's when he made that desperate call. The strength is gone. Hands dropped. He foresaw that this would happen, he foresaw and was afraid. A year before, he put their house up for sale, wrote letters to the governor and the head of the district and asked for help to move closer to the regional center. The house had long been recognized as unsafe, and the family was in line to improve their living conditions. Nikolai was promised either an apartment or help with purchasing a house. But nothing changed. The only interested buyer offered them to sell the entire farm for an amount that would not even buy a cow. But we cannot raise the necessary amount ourselves.

Houses on the outskirts of Rzhev cost from 700 thousand for a tiny hut. Maternal capital there wasn't even enough for that. The Mikhnyuks have no savings left; not a single bank will give a loan to a non-working father with many children. Finding a job without leaving the farm is simply impossible. You can’t go far from your children and the farm to work. The circle is closed.

Nikolay Photo: Stanislav Novgorodtseva for TD

Nikolay found the Constanta Foundation on the Internet and called. He says that then it was a cry from the heart. Out of despair that Masha will be taken to a boarding school. I didn’t even think that they would hear him and respond. But a couple of weeks later, Constanta employees came to visit them. And a month later I received a completely unexpected call: “There is a person who wants to give you a car. Do you mind? Even having already received the keys to a ten-year-old Volkswagen Passat, Nikolai could not believe what was happening.

In the new year Nikolai Mikhnyuk and his children will move to new house. The children from the hostel will return home. And no one else will threaten the family to take Masha to a boarding school. The Constanta Foundation collected the missing amount so that the Mikhnyuks could move from the dying village closer to civilization.

The Constanta Foundation is the only one in the Tver region that provides systematic multilateral assistance to families with children in difficult situation. Sometimes the transition from prosperity to crisis is just one moment - a fire, illness, loss of a job, death of a loved one. Everything can go wrong if you don't lend a helping hand in time.

“Constant” helps legally and financially, brings food, helps make repairs, restore a house, and even recover from alcoholism if the ward is ready to undergo treatment, but cannot cope on his own. The foundation does everything to ensure that the children stay in the family and the family stops drowning. Let's help “Constant” itself survive, work, and provide a lifeline to those who need help. Please make a monthly donation of any amount!

While others are rushing to the city, they decided to spend their youth in remote villages. A bold choice that not everyone can make. But how satisfied are they with their current life and what difficulties do they face?

An interesting study was recently conducted, according to which out of 2,000 medical students surveyed, only 17% of graduates want to improve the healthcare of the domestic outback. The rest are frightened by the lack of housing in the new place, modest wage, lack of prospects, poor equipment in rural hospitals and lack of experienced mentors.

To interest a young doctor in coming to work in a district hospital or clinic, you need powerful motivation and real help. They have been trying to solve this problem at the state level for more than 10 years. Now graduates medical universities Those who decide to move to the area are entitled to a payment of 1 million rubles, the so-called allowance. In addition, each region has its own program to attract young specialists. Some offer apartments in new buildings, others pay rent, and still others offer assistance in mortgage payments (on the website of one department the amount of up to 500,000 rubles per year appeared). And according to the latest data, it is planned to add increased coefficients for rural doctors.

It is also planned to legislate the concepts of “young specialist” and “doctor-mentor”, that is, the question of the availability experienced doctor behind the back should also be closed for inexperienced doctors. The Zemsky Doctor program has recently been expanded in age restrictions. Now all specialists under 50 years of age can count on help with relocation.
Those who are interested can familiarize themselves with all the innovations.
Below are the stories of those who were not afraid of difficulties and exchanged urban realities for rural ones.

Surgeon Vladimir Chizhma moved from Orenburg to the village

Vladimir was not lured to the regional hospital by money; he came here voluntarily after graduating from the medical academy.

“In my third year of medical school, I became seriously interested in surgery, at first I was on duty for free, then I got a job as a nurse. It didn’t work out with graduate school - science is not my thing, so I decided to become a practitioner.”
Unable to find shelter in Orenburg, the young specialist began calling the nearest regional hospitals. He was invited to an interview in one of them, and after a couple of months the man moved to the village, settled in a hostel and threw himself into work.
“Previously, young doctors were distributed among regions, this is correct. It is better to start growing professionally from the village. Here you learn to think and take responsibility. They won’t teach you this in the city; there, in difficult cases, professors and associate professors will think for you, but here you are sometimes left alone with a problem, and you have to solve it. This is more important than all the super equipment available in the city,” Vladimir Chizhma is convinced.

Emergency doctor Evgeny Sharshakov moved to the village from the Komi Republic

“I’m a city person - I grew up in Syktyvkar. After studying, I decided to go on a contract to countryside, because I wanted silence, a life without fuss - that’s my character. I didn’t discuss this with anyone close to me; everyone was surprised, of course, when they found out. To be honest, I assumed that on the spot I would see devastation, empty shops and drunks on the streets. But it turned out that everything was completely wrong. Vizinga is a small capital with the same prices, a cinema, a gym, banks, a decent retail network, and a good hospital. Syktyvkar is about 100 km away, an hour by bus.

I was 24 years old. I didn’t receive any million; the Zemsky Doctor program appeared later. I was counting on a lift of 15 thousand rubles, but upon arrival I found out that they had been cancelled. Reimbursed me for moving expenses chief physician hospitals, they also gave me housing - first a room in a communal apartment for three specialists, then a one-room service apartment. Now I live in a two-room apartment - it’s already my own, partially paid for by the state under the Young Specialist program.

Gynecologist Veronika Makarova works in the village of Berezovka, Krasnoyarsk Territory

“Here, in Berezovka, I was born and raised, I went to the city during my studies, but I always knew that I would come back to work. Now I work here as a gynecologist, and I live in the city and go to work every day, across the 777 bridge ", it turns out to be 25–35 minutes, the operating mode allows you to drive without traffic jams.

I didn’t know about the program for young doctors, I came, got a job, and they told me about it. I just didn't think about it.

I have been working for more than a year, I received a million and gave part of the money to my mother, she taught me and helped me while I lived in Krasnoyarsk. The rest is lying around, I’m wondering where I’ll spend it, in general, everything turned out so unexpectedly, I didn’t know about this program and didn’t think about where to spend it.

I have been working at the Berezovsky district hospital for a little over a year. Patients already know me; I was recently on vacation and when I got out, I discovered that many were specifically waiting for me and did not make an appointment with another doctor. It is very nice. I like being an obstetrician-gynecologist, communicating with mothers who are expecting babies, all these positive emotions"Even though they scream in pain, when the baby is born they are so happy - it's all very cool."

Dentist Anton Osyutin moved from Smolensk to the village of Golynki

The man came to Smolensk to study as a dentist, graduated medical academy and then an internship. For some time Anton Alexandrovich worked in regional center, and having learned about the “Zemsky Doctor” program, he decided to move to the urban village of Golynki, in whose clinic there was a vacancy. In addition, his parents live nearby.

For a year now, the young specialist has been working as a dentist at the Golynkovo ​​City Polyclinic of the Rudnyansk Central District Hospital. IN locality About 3.5 thousand people live there; doctors also serve residents of nearby settlements.
Anton Aleksandrovich plans to improve his living conditions using the payment due to him. Now the doctor rents an apartment in Golynki, and half the cost of rent is paid by the hospital.

Psychiatrist Maryana Shadrina travels to work from Petrozavodsk to remote areas every day

The young doctor works simultaneously in both Pryazha and the village of Sailors. In the morning, Shadrina conducts an appointment at a clinic in Pryazha, and in the afternoon she goes to Matrosy, where she works as a psychiatrist in a local psychiatric hospital. And Maryana lives with her husband in Petrozavodsk. To be on time everywhere, she has to get up at six in the morning. The young doctor returns home no earlier than eight in the evening. It covers almost a hundred kilometers a day.
Maryana likes to live in such a rhythm. He says that working in villages is even more interesting than in the city. “Of course, it’s more convenient in the city, the same archives are at hand, everything can be quickly found and viewed. But at the clinic in Pryazha, I’m the only specialist, so I feel like I’m valued.” It’s interesting to work in Maryana’s psychiatric hospital, and it’s also useful for experience. Here she not only conducts appointments, but directly participates in the treatment of patients. In just a few months, the girl managed to work in a variety of departments, from acute to gerontological. He says it’s even easier with such patients: they don’t have that arrogance that is sometimes found in mentally ill people. healthy people. Maryana is not yet thinking about where she will stay after the end of the required five years.

It has been empirically proven that the most clickable time for Instagram is around 20:00. Photo, filter, tags - and you can publish. Residents big city, coming home from work, they will immerse themselves in “liking” someone else’s colorful life. Around the same time, in the eco-village, which is located 130 kilometers from Minsk, people are gradually preparing for bed after working on the land or in the workshop, having first dined on food from the garden. ABOUT in social networks they heard, of course, but they did not make them a reflection of the ego. Life values- the thing is generally purely individual. We tried to connect two worlds that are unlikely to ever become friends: we took a metropolitan Instagram blogger into the wilderness, gave her a shovel, forced her to bake bread and play with the kids. What came of it?

First, a little information to understand what is happening.

Ringing Streams is an eco-village of eight houses in the Grodno region. Key words - subsistence farming, healthy image life, unity with nature. Nikita and Natalya Tsekhanovich are spouses and parents of two children named Dobrynya and Radosvet.

There are many people who want to go into the wilderness. There are about 20 settlements with several houses in Belarus, more than 100 single houses. It’s easy to find like-minded people: you need to register on a special website and throw out a cry.

Masha is a model, has 35 thousand subscribers and 3 thousand “likes” for each photo in Instagram. She bats her eyelashes, cutely puts her blonde hair behind her ear, clicks her manicured fingers on the smartphone screen and thinks:

- There are bloggers who post photos every day and take them in the same color. I do not understand this. I can post photos once a week. I don't care how many subscribers I have. Once there were few of them - about 10 thousand. Then it became more and more.

I didn’t even know that we had such settlements. I know that once the first Russian millionaire gave up everything and went to live in a village and built a house there. Are these the same people?

From the road to the Tsekhanovich house it is a five-minute walk through hills and groves. Nikita has been living here for almost ten years, and eventually found a like-minded wife. Nikita once bought a small one-story house for $300. He repaired it, arranged it, furnished it - all with his own hands.

- I was born in Baranovichi, and I like the places here: hills, ravines, rivers. My being immediately said: I want to live here. I was still alone then.

The story of how lovers met is romantic. This happened in India. “We were riding a scooter, Natalya hugged me from behind, and I realized that everything...”- Nikita recalls. Natalya herself is originally from St. Petersburg, and before arriving in the settlement she “toiled in the office.”

Nikita takes off his shoes and spends the rest of the day walking barefoot through sand, mud, and thorny vegetation.

- Aren’t you afraid of hurting your leg or catching a tick? - we ask, looking at our New Balance with gratitude.

- What to be afraid of? Ticks? They are needed to vaccinate people against all sorts of nasty things. In nature, everything is wise.

Previously, the settler worked in furniture production, now he makes furniture for himself. The main profession is a stove maker.

- We call our style “affectionate brutal”- the head of the family strokes the brown and white chest of drawers. - I used to breathe formaldehyde and resins and dreamed that in the settlement I would make furniture from natural ingredients.

The owner's plans include adding a second floor. In the meantime, all four inhabitants of the house are huddled in one room.

Radushka and Dobrynya fill the room with the ultrasound of voices, laughter, the clinking of toys and musical instruments. Guests have a magical effect on them. Masha immediately took a liking to Dobrynya - the child does not waste time and takes care of the young lady in every possible way and spends all his time only with her.

- I like to play with children, but I don’t want my own yet,- Masha easily copes with the role of a mother, entertains the children and asks the question: - Will they go to school? Are there any schools near here?

- In Korelichi there is both a Belarusian-language school and a regular one. IN kindergarten they don’t go to school, we’ll see how the children themselves want to do it,- says Nikita. - Dobrynya already knows how to read and write. It is believed that children who did not go to kindergarten are unsociable. But our children cannot be more sociable.

- They are little, they don’t know yet whether they want to go to school...- the girl is perplexed.

- Why? We think we are teaching them, but in reality they are teaching us. They are pure, angels. The heads are not slagged or fooled. Sometimes they say things that make you listen.

- I want to study at home!- blond Dobrynya puts everyone in their place.

Masha is disheartened by another revealing piece of information: both children were born in the settlement, without the help of doctors.

- We were told that giving birth at home is irresponsible,- Nikita explains. - How so? It is irresponsible to give a child and wife into the hands of an aunt who, perhaps, has been abandoned by her boyfriend and is in a bad mood. We prepared for childbirth for a year, read books, watched videos, talked to knowledgeable people. This is responsibility.

When the time came, we lit candles and played music. This sacrament is the birth of a person. Unforeseen cases? Where there is love, there is no place for fear. If something went wrong, into the car - and into the maternity hospital, of course.

- How did your parents react to you settling here?- Masha changes the subject.

- At first, with caution. They thought it was nonsense. My life is just like this: I didn’t graduate from several institutes, I didn’t see myself in society. They are used to me being all about searching. Then we looked at how and with what we live, got to know our neighbors and realized that it was not outcasts and marginalized people who gathered here, but people who were successful in society. Among the neighbors there are famous athletes and musicians in Belarus. They just got bored in the city and found something more interesting for themselves.

- Wow…

“Bread is something magical. I hope you feel it today."

According to Natalya, making bread is a woman’s sacred duty. Our ancestors also attached magical meaning to this product. Young people don't understand. I went to the hypermarket and bought it.

- No, of course, I don’t cook at all,- Masha watches as Natalya begins to knead the dough. - At home I only eat salads. In general, I like to eat out.

- I cook for the family,- says Natalya. - This is the food that passed through mine kind hands with thoughts of love. And bread is something magical. I hope, Masha, you will feel this today.

- Society imposes the idea that cooking for a woman is hard labor,- Nikita supports his wife. - The posters read: “Hurray, no need to cook, everyone let's go as a family at McDonald's! All this is done in order to cut cabbage.

So, remember. Knead bread dough in silence. Focus your thoughts on the process. Settlement bread is prepared with rye sourdough - flour and water are added to it. For usefulness - also honey, cereals, herbs, seasonings, nuts, raisins and basically anything else.

- This is interesting,- says Masha and crumples the sticky mass. - But for a very long time... It feels like I’ve been interfering for six months already.

- Just feel the process,- Natalya helps. - You can even close your eyes.

The kitchen idyll leads to the truth, which Nikita formulates:

- A woman is created for joy and love. Material support- it's a man's business. The main thing a man must do is to create happy conditions for his wife and children.

The bread is ready. Masha draws a sun on it - that’s how it should be. The round piece goes into the oven.

“We don’t eat meat. The state after eating meat is comparable to mild drug intoxication.”

A mandatory ritual before eating is to stand in a circle and read a funny poem of gratitude for food: ““Jakui” to the sky and “jakui” to the earth for everything that is on our table. And let all the people on earth have food on the table.” This confuses Masha.

- Looks wild- the girl admits later.

Nikita and Natalya, as is fashionable, do not eat meat. At all. There is always vegetable and proper food eg potatoes, mushrooms, vegetables herbs. Tea - with linden, thyme, raspberries and a whole list useful plants. Protein is replaced by other components.

- We strive to provide ourselves with our products as much as possible. Your own garden, garden. We study wild plants. Dwarf is considered a weed, but in fact, nothing is tastier and healthier in the spring.

- We don’t eat meat, and the children have never eaten meat. They say it's impossible. Aren't our children active enough? The state after eating meat is comparable to mild drug intoxication. The meat is digested within almost a day and a half. In this state, children cannot be active in principle. We like to be healthy, and we are happy that our children are healthy.

- I can’t live without meat- Masha has her own position. - Although I have girlfriends and friends who are vegetarians. In general, I’m lucky by nature: I have a good metabolism - I eat everything I want and don’t gain weight.

The topic of social media addiction comes up at the table.

- I have a positive attitude towards social networks if they deliver joy to man, - Nikita points to the laptop and other gadgets in the house. - If people come to them out of hopelessness, from a lack of living friends and a person does not want to realize himself in life differently, then it’s sad... I also have a page. There are 4 thousand friends on VKontakte, and the same number in the stove group. We are talking. Social networks are just a tool that needs to be used correctly. Like an ax: if you use it to chop wood, you can do a lot of good.

- But I have no time,- Natalya enters. - I washed the dishes, tidied up, walked in the garden, planted in the vegetable garden, talked with my family... Once every few months I just go in to congratulate someone on their birthday.

“In any unclear situation, go to the forest. But now, if a person feels bad, he either gets drunk or something else.”

On the settlers' plot of 2 hectares, it seems that everything possible grows in our latitudes - from parsley and carrots to nuts, mulberries, and dogwoods. Planted so that everything blooms alternately and pleases almost all year round.

- I had a dream: children wake up and run barefoot into the garden to eat berries and fruits. I would like there to always be abundance in the garden. There are also exotic plants: magnolia, ginkgo biloba.

For children, of course, there is freedom here - they run, ride on cars, laugh.

Masha also enjoys freedom. I managed to walk the dogs...

...run along the paths, stand in the dandelions...

...wash your hands from a photogenic jug...

...play with the children...

...to “take selfies” with the children...

...just “take a selfie”...

...plant a watermelon. They are small here, of course, but they are our own. green sprout will turn into a green berry by the end of summer.

- I liked planting more than bread. Op - and the watermelon is already in the ground,- concludes Masha.

And the girl also needs to plant a tree.

- In any unclear situation, go to the forest,- says Nikita. - But now, if a person feels bad, he either gets drunk or something else, that is, he makes himself worse. But in fact, to get out of a bad state, you need, on the contrary, to put yourself in order.

They say every man should plant a tree. I decided not to waste time on trifles and planted several thousand trees. The Masha tree will grow here for several hundred years. Man in in a good way connects himself with this place. This is Amur velvet, beautiful tree, corks are made from it.