The old beekeeper opened his hives and showed us the honey. He had been a beekeeper for thirty years, he said, and he was very proud. For many years he had kept bees without knowing much about bees. But now he was reading and studying. And he had a great treasure, he had six new queens. He said they came from California. And I judged from his description that they were some California variant of the Italian black. He said he was very happy with his new bees. He said that they would be more frost resistant, and that they would work earlier and later in the season.

Then he took us into his little tent and closed the flaps, and he cut great slices of the good black sour rye bread of the Ukraine, and put honey on it, and gave it to us to eat. The deep hum of the bees came from outside. And later he opened the hives again and brought out handfuls of bees without fear, as most beekeepers do. But he warned us not to uncover ourselves, for the bees do not like strangers.

From there we went to a field where they were threshing wheat. The equipment was pitifully inadequate. There was an old one-cylinder gas engine running an ancient threshing machine, and their blower they turned by hand. And here again we noticed the shortage of men. There were so many more women than men, and of the men who were there so many were crippled. The engineer who operated the gas engine had all the fingers on one hand gone.

Since the land was not very good, the yield in wheat was not high. The grain came pouring out of the threshing machine on to a large canvas. Children were stationed at the edge of the canvas so that any grains which happened to jump off and fall into the dirt could be put back, for every grain was precious. The clouds had been piling up all morning, and now a sprinkle of rain started. The people rushed up with cloths to cover the pile of wheat.

An argument was going on among several of the men, and Poltarazki translated to us softly. It seemed that they were arguing as to who was to invite us to lunch. One man had the larger table, and the wife of another had baked that morning. One man claimed that his house was just finished, and it was new, and he should be the man to be the host. And so they agreed. But this man had very little to eat from. The rest should contribute glasses, and plates, and wooden spoons. And when it was decided that his house would be used, the women of his house hiked up their skirts and trotted for the village.

Since we have come back from Russia, probably the remark we have heard most is “I guess they put on a show for you; I guess they really fixed it up for you. They didn’t show you the real thing.” The people in this village did put on a show for us. They put on the same kind of show a Kansas farmer would put on for a guest. They did the same thing that our people do, so that Europeans say “The Americans live on chicken.”