Collecting wild plants

The main wealth of Siberia is not only fish and furs, but also a huge number of berries, mushrooms and pine nuts. The collection of wild plants has always been considered an important help in the peasant economy.

The first place among berry crafts in the XIX century belonged to cranberries. In the best forests in the harvest year, one person could gain 6−8 pounds. The best places were in the Kondinsky parish of Tobolsk county. In the harvest years, one peasant family earned from 80 to 200 rubles. The peasants also collected cranberries, knyazhenika, cloudberries, blueberries, bird cherry and mountain ash.

The peasants also collected mushrooms. Porcini mushrooms, bunches, redheads, volnushki, buttermilk were taken to the bazaar. The peasants dried and salted mushrooms, and dried mushrooms were more expensive than fresh and salted ones.

Women and children were engaged in picking berries and mushrooms in the villages. Harvesting pine nuts, which is a male occupation, brought the greatest income to the peasants. Only a very strong person can make long transitions through forests, carry bags of cones or ready-made nuts on himself.

The collection of wild plants helped the Soviet people more than once in difficult times: in the hungry 1920s, during the Great Patriotic War and the postwar period. The state did not stand aside, seeking to benefit from the processing of wild plants. Factories and plants for processing wild-growing raw materials were opened (it was accepted by the population from the collectors). On October 1, 1938, the berry extraction plant in the village of Nakhrachi was put into operation.

In the late Soviet period, mushroom picking became almost a national entertainment, a mass event in which entire collectives of institutes, factories and factories participated. At the time of harvesting wild berries, mushrooms, pine nuts, reception points were created, many of which had installations for drying berries and mushrooms and rooms for pickling and pickling mushrooms

Now this occupation has not been forgotten. In the Tyumen region, from 6 to 10 thousand villagers in the season participate in the delivery of berries and wild plants. Today it is more difficult to take up harvesting, because berry areas have decreased, forests are becoming less and less.

Mushroom picking

In the folk tradition, mushrooms occupy an intermediate position between animals and plants. In Russian folk tales there is a plot about the war of the tsar of Peas with mushrooms. The indigenous peoples of Siberia do not collect mushrooms, considering them to be deer food. Russian Siberians traditionally divided mushrooms into "good" and "toadstools" (poisonous). The name of the mushrooms has dialectal features ("obabok" - birch bark, "sinyavka" - cheese tooth). The inedible mushroom was simply called "dog".

The peasants not only harvested mushrooms for themselves, dried and salted for the winter, but also collected them for sale. Fresh and salted pears, redheads, porcini mushrooms and buttermilk were brought to the bazaar. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the price of mushrooms in Siberia ranged from 20 to 80 kopecks per bucket. Small mushrooms were valued more dearly.

There are many beliefs and superstitions associated with mushrooms. Mushrooms have grown on the wall of the house — to wealth. In dreams, mushrooms mean a groom for a girl, and pregnancy for a woman.

In omens, mushrooms are used to judge the weather and the future harvest.

Cedar craft

The extraction of pine nuts is one of the traditional peasant crafts of Siberia. The cedar craft was very profitable in the nut harvest. They went fishing from August 1/14 and returned at the end of September. If the "cedar craftmen" were far from home, then the peasants stocked up on food for a month. Cedar craft was sometimes practiced by all the villagers, both men, women, and children. Shishkari (cedar craftmen) united in artels of 3, 5 and 10 people. The nuts in this artel were divided equally.

Ripe nuts from the tree were knocked down with a "hammer" (mallet) after the Third (Nut) The Savior. The mallet was a long pole, to the end of which was attached a stump of a log. The cones were taken out by climbing if they were not quite ripe. At the end of August, women and children were collecting "fallen" cones in the forests (which had fallen). Usually, after a big wind, they went to the cedar grove and kicked several bags of cones from the ground.

Cones were dried in the sun and nuts were extracted from them, rolling between the "roller". Then the clean nuts were sifted from the scales and sifted through sieves. After that, they were blown to separate very small debris.

The price of the finished nut on the spot has always been lower than the city price, which was used by resellers. There were cases when peasants took money from the kulaks "for the nut" since the spring.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the price of a nut ranged from 80 kopecks to 1 ruble 50 kopecks per pound. In a lean year, it reached 3−4 rubles. An adult worker with a teenager could get more than 40 pounds of nuts in a season.

Berry craft

Berry craft has long been one of the occupations of the indigenous population of Siberia. Picking berries and harvesting them for the winter were of considerable importance in their lives. The most favorite berry of the Northerners was cloudberry. Since the second half of July, numerous tundra swamps have literally turned pink from the abundance of berries. The berry was consumed fresh and harvested for the winter. In addition to cloudberries, cranberries were harvested. For storage, it was simply soaked in barrels. Blueberries were harvested in small quantities.

The berry industry gave the peasants a small income. When harvesting berries (black currants, raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, cherry trees and others), a peasant woman in the second half of the nineteenth century could save 10−20 rubles over the summer. So, in the village of Karachino, Tobolsk county, raspberries were harvested, which were sold in Tobolsk at a price of 80 kopecks. for the bucket. The princess (Princess berry), who grew up in the area of the village of Aremzyansky, the "small" homeland of D.I. Mendeleev, was sold for much more expensive.