In Melikhovo everyone was always busy doing their own thing. The brother Mikhail mended and repaired, the sister Maria was busy with household chores, the father Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov supervised the workers and children. Anton Pavlovich was always up to date with all the news in Melikhovo and closely followed the life of the estate.
“We have had an excellent summer, too. Lots of heat and plenty of rain. The harvest is good. We sowed 10 dessiatins of rye, 10 — of oats, 10 — of clover, 4 — of lentils, a little bit of buckwheat and millet — about two dessiatins of each, and a dessiatin of potatoes. You can imagine what life is like in my homestead, and how often I have to open the table to get money to pay the mowers, peasant women, etc.
A new kitchen is being built. Chickens, ducks, mongrels, carpenters, patients — a real Babylon! The haymaking was also noisy, hectic, with rains and thunderstorms. We had 4 thousand poods of hay harvested and 20 poods of blood boiled. We had a hell of a lot of clover cut. As for the vegetable garden, it was not quite successful this year. Cabbage and kohlrabi were affected by a disease called kila, a kind of root sarcoma. Instead of the expected four or five thousand heads of cabbage, we will collect only three, or even fewer. But that is not the problem, it is that the disease is contagious and we will have to find another spot for the cabbage plants, i.e. outside the homestead, and this involves additional fertilization, hiring a keeper and other expenditures.
The garden was no good either. There were no cherries at all, and only half of the apple trees bloomed. There were a lot of gooseberries and raspberries, but we do not have a market for them, and there are neither people nor time to pick them. Pears did not bloom either. Not a single tree froze, but we had another misfortune. Remember I wrote you in the fall that I had planted a new orchard? Just imagine, rabbits have eaten up all the young apple trees. The snow piled high above the fences, so the orchard was not fenced off from the field in any way. There was plenty of space for the rabbits. This year there has been no or almost no fruit, but peppers, corn, tomatoes, melons and even watermelons are ripening — not in a greenhouse, but in the open air.” Anton Chekhov, August 1893, Melikhovo.
“We have had an excellent summer, too. Lots of heat and plenty of rain. The harvest is good. We sowed 10 dessiatins of rye, 10 — of oats, 10 — of clover, 4 — of lentils, a little bit of buckwheat and millet — about two dessiatins of each, and a dessiatin of potatoes. You can imagine what life is like in my homestead, and how often I have to open the table to get money to pay the mowers, peasant women, etc.
A new kitchen is being built. Chickens, ducks, mongrels, carpenters, patients — a real Babylon! The haymaking was also noisy, hectic, with rains and thunderstorms. We had 4 thousand poods of hay harvested and 20 poods of blood boiled. We had a hell of a lot of clover cut. As for the vegetable garden, it was not quite successful this year. Cabbage and kohlrabi were affected by a disease called kila, a kind of root sarcoma. Instead of the expected four or five thousand heads of cabbage, we will collect only three, or even fewer. But that is not the problem, it is that the disease is contagious and we will have to find another spot for the cabbage plants, i.e. outside the homestead, and this involves additional fertilization, hiring a keeper and other expenditures.
The garden was no good either. There were no cherries at all, and only half of the apple trees bloomed. There were a lot of gooseberries and raspberries, but we do not have a market for them, and there are neither people nor time to pick them. Pears did not bloom either. Not a single tree froze, but we had another misfortune. Remember I wrote you in the fall that I had planted a new orchard? Just imagine, rabbits have eaten up all the young apple trees. The snow piled high above the fences, so the orchard was not fenced off from the field in any way. There was plenty of space for the rabbits. This year there has been no or almost no fruit, but peppers, corn, tomatoes, melons and even watermelons are ripening — not in a greenhouse, but in the open air.” Anton Chekhov, August 1893, Melikhovo.
