McGuire writes book on Russian farm trips

A trip to trace Russian ancestry turned into educating farmers in foreign lands as told in a book by a local farmer.

Lee R. McGuire, who lives on Cashup Flat, made his first trip to the former Soviet Union in 1991 to search for his mother’s relatives in the Volga River region. After that trip, he contacted an organization which implemented programs assisting Russian farmers “to uproot their entrenched controlled way of living and farming into a more friendly economic society.”

“My love of agriculture beckoned me as a volunteer to assist in this important work,” he wrote in his newly released book, “The Furrow Turns: One Man’s Adventure in Agriculture in Russia and Beyond.”

He was sent the “scope of work” to prepare for his assignments. He determined the limits of production, soil type, rain fall, disease, plant food and growing season.

He worked with three different organizations, ACDI-VOCA, Land o’ Lakes and the Winrock Foundation. The programs sent him to 10 countries: Ukraine, Siberia, Kyrgystan, Kolingrad, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. He went to Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan twice.

He made 13 trips through 2008. After that the programs that he worked with were discontinued and he hasn’t been back since.

“I’m 73, and I’ve had MS for quite a number of years, so it was time to quit,” McGuire said.

Although he said he can’t write very well, he wanted to put together a book.

“I wanted to do it before I get to the point where I can’t do a damned thing,” he said. “It took me two winters to do it.”

In the spring of 1991, McGuire told his wife he was going to Russia to visit the small village where his mother’s parents, the Litzenbergers and the Scheuermans, were from.

That first trip was a long one beginning with a plane ride from Spokane to Seattle and from Seattle to Moscow, Russia.

McGuire then took a train from Moscow to Volgograd that he said was slow and bumpy and stopped at every village.

He met a 19-year-old interpreter and had to be driven to Yagoanaya.

On the way, they were stopped at a guard station.

His interpreter told McGuire not to say anything.

A guard put an AK47 at McGuire’s ear as his interpreter told the guard that McGuire had hearing aids and that he lost his hearing during the “Great Patriotic War.” After the driver and interpreter were taken for more questioning, they finally were let through the gate and headed for the village.

McGuire said Yagoanaya reminded him of Endicott about 60 years ago. He recognized some of the names such as Schmick, Luft, Lust, Scheuerman, Gerlitz, Moore, Benner and Bafus.

McGuire found John Scheuerman and his wife, Maria. As they visited, Scheuerman took out a knife and cut a piece of pork fat and started chewing on it. McGuire said that’s where the phrase, “chewing the fat,” comes from.

“Let me tell you, those Russians know how to drink their vodka and never show it,” McGuire said in the book. “I had to find that out the hard way.”

But McGuire also said the people were gracious and that they wanted to show him everything in the area and meet everyone. He said the people treat visitors to the best food and drink they have.

McGuire started doing volunteer work in 1992 in the former Soviet Union under the guidance of the United States Agency for International Development. Work was being done in 10 countries in Eastern Europe. U.S. agriculture and business experts were linked with clients abroad who requested assistance, often as part of an ongoing development project.

“I said from the beginning, after seeing their potential, it would take three generations to get everything in order,” McGuire said in his book.

His first assignment was in the Vologda Region, about a three hour drive from Moscow and very close to the Volga River. The rainfall and soil was very similar to Cashup Flat.

But the farming practices were very poor, McGuire said. “They worked very hard, but were about two months late for everything,” McGuire writes.

When McGuire was finished with his assignment, he said he had quite an experience getting back to Moscow. They were stopped three times by the police to check the driver’s paperwork.

Another trip took him to central Asia, Azerbaijan, to work with garbanzo bean production.

McGuire learned that is was much different than Eastern Europe in that the people don’t use alcohol and won’t grow brewing barley because the people knew it was used to make beer. He said Azerbaijan used to be nearly all wheat production but now it is nearly all garbanzo bean production.

McGuire told about one man who had six or seven girls and about nine or ten acres of garbanzos. He didn’t have a combine or any kind of harvesting machinery, so the girls pulled the plants by hand and threw them in the middle of the road and vehicles would run over the beans.

On a trip to Samara, Russia, McGuire worked with a man from Seattle who worked for the Fisher Flour Mills. They were doing an excellent job of farming there, and the only thing McGuire could see was that their seeding rate was too high and their fertilizer was too low. The moisture was very close to the surface.

“The farm had the cleanest and best summer fallow I had ever seen,” he said.

The tool they used was about 10 sections of very heavy Russian harrows with sickle sections welded on the bottom of each tooth. They crossed the field in two directions which killed the weeds and saved the moisture. This farm had a yield of about 25 to 30 percent more than other farms, McGuire said.

“All this was due to more moisture to seed into in the fall, and more total moisture to mature the wheat plants,” McGuire writes.

An assignment to Siberia was to work with a machinery manufacturer and prove its usefulness on a farm.

A factory made straw choppers for a combine and a tillage tool, something McGuire had never seen. He also drove a big wheel tractor and pulled two of the tillage tools that he said worked great, even in standing stubble.

He said Siberia is quite nice in the spring, much like here. It has low humidity and is quite warm. It also has good soil and is level.

In former Prussia, McGuire said he was surprised to find out every hectare was tilled four feet deep.

“Their farm ground actually had water working from down below and had to be tilled that way,” McGuire writes. “Or at least that’s the way the Germans did it when it was called Prussia.”

He said it was very good soil and produced well with a cool climate for good wheat production. They could raise excellent barley and never had to worry about moisture.

In Georgia, McGuire worked on a seed cleaner and seed treater. He also assembled new machinery farmers had purchased from Turkey. He made sure it was assembled correctly, greased and tried out in the field. He also wanted to find used Soviet grain cleaners so they could have two good cleaners for their seed company.

In Siberia, McGuire also worked on a 100,000 hectare farm. A hectare equates to about 2.48 acres, so this particular farm was half the size of Whitman County. The area has fairly low rainfall and a great deal of wind in the winter months. Because of the wind, winter wheat was not seeded and spring wheat is seeded.

They usually ran six or seven tractors side-by-side. They start at one village and get to the next village in nine or 10 hours. A new crew is put on, they fill up with fuel and change drivers so that one shift is in daylight and one shift runs at night. McGuire said he overheard one group of workers say that some fields are so large that it would take three days and nights before they ever turned a corner.

“I hope the readers get a charge out of the book,” McGuire said.

Now McGuire tends to three lawns, does some gardening and also reads.

The book is available at Main Street Books in Colfax. McGuire will be signing copies of his book at Main Street Books on June 14 from 1 to 4 p.m.