Seed Survival

I drove Alesia to school this morning. It had been snowing most of the night and was still snowing as I was driving. Alesia complained that it shouldn't be snowing in Spring. I am not complaining too much, as the temperature is above -10 during the day and snow is still a novelty for me. We were all driving carefully on the road, as it was complete muddy slush. I only skidded once, which helped me determine the fastest speed I could go. When I got to work I was shown some photos from staff who have just spent two weeks visiting our agricultural cooperatives in Zavkhan (a western province). The snow is still falling heavily, the roads are still terrible or missing, people are still hungry, and food supplies are slowly making their way in on big cumbersome trucks.

In all of this, we found some good news. After the potato harvest last year in September we worked with seven agricultural cooperatives to help them build root cellars for their first attempt at storing seed potato over winter. This is an important step to give them independence from us in terms of seed. Our Food Security staff were really worried over winter that with the dzud and the extreme cold the seed potato would freeze. We heard by mobile phone that most seeds were ok, but it was time to check for ourselves and spend some time with the cooperatives talking about gardening planning for this year. It seems strange to talk about seedlings and gardens when surrounded by so much snow and cold, but the snow will melt eventually (and probably cause some flash flooding - it is called "yellow water floods" here) and it will be time to put crops in again.

The heated greenhouse at one cooperative, surrounded by snow



Come summer these frames will be covered with plastic and will be used for growing tomatoes and cucumbers

The road conditions are still terrible. Our driver (who is also the husband of my babysitter) spent a lot of time digging the car out of deep snow. The situation remains tough, and one of our cooperatives had to eat their seed potato as they were running out of food, but the other six have kept their root cellars at the right temperature and the seed potato is fine. Some even still have some pickled vegetables left from the summer harvest. In extreme harsh conditions like this it is so important to be able to store food, so we are really happy that the cooperatives have been able to cope sufficiently over winter and keep their seeds saved.

Turuu digging the Prado out of the snow, again and again and again.

The outside door of one of the root cellars. Inside there is a passage going down several metres, and then another internal door.



Sacks of seed potato inside a root cellar. On one of the sacks is a thermometer to keep track of the temperature. Each root cellar has a stove inside to bring the temperature up to just above freezing. As the winter has been so severe many cooperative members have had to take 24 hour shifts to maintain the temperature in the root cellar at just above freezing.

Some bottles of pickled vegetables inside a root cellar



I don't know who these two kids are, but they are very cute!