Dear friends! One of our sisters is ill so we can't accept guests right now. Excuse us.

We are a small peasant commune located in the province of Voronezh. The commune appeared in 1922 as a part of the Underground or Catacomb Church, the Orthodox movement refused the official church, collaborated with the Soviet state.

Our fathers refused to take part in the Soviet life and organizations or enroll to the army. A lot of them spent years and decades in prisons and concentration camps or were killed. But they kept the old peasant's lifestyle, relationships and culture disappeared in the most part of Russia. They lived a simple life by a subsistence farming and didn't save up much property. And we try to follow them as far as we can.

Now our commune consists of about twenty people, mostly old. We grow up the vegetables, rear the chiсkens, goats and bees, and try to help each other in the daily life. We love to sing the Russian spiritual songs which our fathers preserved to us.

Most of our members speaks only Russian but we have couple of young guys speaking English too. Our young members are mostly vegetarian. We are happy to see guests, especially at the summer time.

Interests

The Orthodoxy, Old Believer culture, Russian spiritual songs, subsistence farming and the rest of the world.

• culture
• singing
• folklore
• dining
• vegetarian
• gardening

Teach, Learn, Share

Our lifestyle is very simple - so I don't know if we can teach something. We do the quite ordinary village gardening, poultry farming, beekeeping etc. We sing our tradition songs, probably it might be interesting a little bit.

What I Can Share with Hosts

We have the small guest house with the Russian oven and the plank bed. We'll share our food and work if you like to help us a little bit.