McEwen Farming and Family Stuff

How we got involved in this Country

How we got involved with the Ukraine?

My interest in Ukraine agriculture goes back to my school days when I learnt that Ukraine had arguably the best soils in the world for cereal growing .Of course, one could only dream of seeing it, up to when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and the Wall came down in Berlin , westerners were not welcome.

I had seen agriculture in other countries beginning in 1977 when I was privileged to be able to join a study tour of the USA and Canadian farming areas with Ossie Sandersons tour group.

After that when our daughter, Karin was teaching in London we , my wife, Alison  and I were able to tour farms in the UK and Scotland and eventually to find the farm my forbears immigrated from in  Sth West Scotland in 1863 and incidentally to meet relatives who were still farming that land .

Alison said to me one day in the late 90’s, Why don’t you organise a tour of the farmlands of Ukraine because you are always talking about it?

How on earth can we make a meaningful connection? We had one contact. Robin Pocklington, a family friend was at that time a Director of SEND International, a Christian mission serving the Americas, Asia, Eurasia and Europe. Robin was responsible at that time for  the work in Eastern Europe.

Robin had been to Ukraine and gave me contact with John Paetkau who was from a farming family in Alberta, Canada. He had been  in Kiev, completing language training and had just moved to Sumi, a rural city in the North East, near the Russian border.

THEN an Internet search, Google was new then. I found a farmer from Iowa, USA who had gone to UKR with a Govt agency to help in getting the country going again. This was in the mid 90’s and Gordie is still there. Still trying to farm but his main business is Importing farm machinery and restoring it to sell on.

We also heard about an International conference to be held in in the Melbourne Exhibition centre to include 8000 delegates worldwide in 1999. We decided to register for this, Bi Annual World Baptist conference and we were not even Baptist then. We thought we should be able to meet an Ukrainian or two and so we registered for the European Luncheon.

As we sat at a round table of eight we asked around if there were any Ukrainians . They thought not but as the meal began, two women sat in the two remaining chairs and the younger one introduced her older Aunty as Alexandra from Ukraine.

Turns out, Alexandra, was a significant leader in the Christian Women’s movements in her area and knew some important people, always an asset in getting things done in any jurisdiction.

At the end of the meal we had pencilled in a week’s tour of her area including a visit to an agricultural research establishment attached to the university in the region and to several farms.

Resulting in our first visit in 2000 to 4 places Kiev, Vinnitsa , Odessa in the Black Sea region where Gordie my farming mate from Iowa was operating and then right across North East to Sumi where the Paetkaus’ from Alberta were working .

I was involved in contract harvesting with Gordie for three years and started farming with him for a short time by supplying a tractor to the equation. This was one of those decisions that was too good not to be in, and failed dramatically. Within 3 months, our Greek grain trader partner lost his line of credit. My tractor failed for different reasons, our seed stocks disappeared, and so I learnt a valuable lesson and lost all the money I had put in. We discovered naively what it was like to do business in a strange country.

In the mean time, we made friends in the village that was in the centre of the farm and found what it was like to be poor and disadvantaged. The children did not even have shoes and could not go to school in the winter because there was only a dirt road to the village and it was impassable, most of the time.

Alison decided to put a shipping container of second hand clothing, toys and bikes etc together similar to what  the mother of Gordie, my farmer partner was doing from the USA.

This eventually happened with a lot of help from our local friends and lot of difficulty with Customs in Ukraine. However, short story long we sent ten containers mostly 20ft but included two 40-foot high cubes over a period of 17 years.

The charity ‘Ukraine Aid and Education Fund’ was started. Twenty one years later is now ‘Horizons – Local and Beyond’

How to finance the freight for this aid, – trucking both ends and shipping  was the next challenge and the idea of starting an Op Shop  resulted in the ‘Look First Op Shop’ opening in the old barbers shop ,then Elders building taken over by the supermarket and eventually to the old National Bank.

The last container left in Nov 17 as the need was  being  filled locally by second hand shops/markets and the Ukrainian economy was improving.

The Fund now is sending into Ukraine finance only, and for wider needs including local Donald and District.  The UKR funds are distributed  by Victor Boltak, our manager in Vinnitsa for tertiary student scholarships and since the incursion recently into the east of the country (2014/15) to refugees fleeing those districts. On asking the refugees themselves what kind of help they would like they asked for English teaching classes as this would help their children’s over all education.

Ukraine has a rich history and has experienced many conflicts , most notably the enforced  ‘Holodamor’  famine in the early 1930’s when Stalin took all the cereals grown by the Kulak farmers  and starved them to death. We saw a stature of a small girl who was shot for hiding just five stalks of wheat. This was followed by the Second World War where the country was trashed and burnt first by Hitler and then by the Russians winning back control. Hilter had an underground 7 story bunker in a Pine Forest just outside Vinnitsa, known as the Werewolf Lair. His lair was supposed to be a secret  location . He was there when the War turned around in North Africa when Rommel  was forced to retreat from Tobruk. In 2000, on our first visit it was as it was left after the war, at the end of a two wheel track in the forest with the remains of an officers’ swimming pool and heaps of reinforced concrete spread around.

On our last visit in 2018 it is now a museum to the War with plenty of relics and no one knows much detail about it. All the architects and engineers were sent on holiday in a plane with a bomb in it! There is a new museum, in Kiev on the escarpment overlooking Kiev to the Holodomor. Trust it will not be damaged this time, in the current conflict.

Ukraine is around the same size of New South Wales with about 44 million people and mostly arable deep Chernozem black soil with a mild climate ideal for wheat growing although they also grow summer crops like corn, soybeans and sunflowers . The soil is black but not sticky and a disk seeder shines in it.

Russia to the North is a huge country over 17 million square kilometres almost double the USA and China and three times bigger than Australia with ten time zones.

Fast forward to 2022 and Putin has the Czarist dream of restoring the former Russian Federation and the glory days of Peter the Great with his utopian St Petersburg to rival European grandeur.

Moscow is a grand city now, wide boulevards, extensive  museums and art galleries and deep underground palatial stations large enough to be nuclear shelters if needed.

Ukraine also has grand cities like Kiev and Odessa on the Black Sea . The Dnieper River to rival the Mississippi, and soils not to just kick at but to pick up in handfuls and drool over.

Religion is also a big part in this equation . Putin is an Orthodox Christian and the Russian Orthodox Church based in Moscow goes way back to early Church Schisms with the Roman Church.

There is conflict with the Ukrainian Encephalus Orthodox Church based in Kiev which also goes back to the Christian Church and State inception and the Russian Orthodox Church. I understand these Churches had Popes before Rome and there are still monasteries in these Churches that we have visited in both countries.

I was surprised on our visit to Red Square in Moscow to find an orthodox image of Christ over the entrance to the famous GUM retail store which takes up one side of this significant square. I cannot believe it was there under Soviet Communist rule.

Over the past 500 years, Ukraine has been ruled by Poland, Lithuanian, Austria, Russia and briefly, Germany.  Each century Ukraine has edged closer to independence. After 1917, Ukraine experienced a level of independence with revival of their language, arts and crafts, culture. However, very shortly Russia became the dominate force and forced Russification on the Ukrainian culture. This included the great famine of the 30s – Holodomor. It wasn’t till 1991, after the fall of the Wall in East Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union that Ukraine gained independence and only in the last 15 years have they experienced true freedom and growth in their economy and a move toward western Europe and democracy.

So it is with great sadness that we are observing through the media and social media another takeover attempt to control Ukraine. Again, it is Russia who is the instigator. This time the whole world, except one or two notables seem to be in support of Ukraine and we pray that the Ukrainians resistance will be successful. In the meanwhile, it is the people, the families just like ours who are suffering.

Horizons – Local and Beyond have announced an Appeal. Money will be sent to assist families who are likely to be hungry in a week or so, wounded soldiers and civilians who need hospitalization and the equipment that goes with those needs. Emails coming through speak of appeals for food, antiseptic, linen, bandages – the basics. Please feel confident that money sent will be distributed responsibly.

 I am unashamedly a conservative Evangelical Christian and belief that God will not allow us to trash His world . At the same time the Bible talks of end times and one day Christ will return and we need to be ready for that. In the mean time, we are to carry on and as all good farmers leaving the place better than when we started. We are to love God and our neighbour as ourselves and get on with making our world a better place .

This is a long story as we have been there ten times and if interested check my blog (amc12370.wordpress.com)

Ian McEwen