The sainfoin field, unfortunately, was a bust, we have learned. A frost this May apparently killed the entire crop. It was an expensive investment that has now been reduced to rubble. In its place, generic grass and thistle took over the field.
“If this was New Zealand,” Brian said, “we’d have at least cut this grass before the thistle had turned woody and flowered. Your animals won’t be able to eat this!” These are hard hitting guys, who know their facts.
Then they turned to the adviser hired to maintain the groups. “What about fertilizer? Perhaps if there had been fertilizer in this field, the sainfoin would have been strong enough to withstand the frost.”
“We cannot use fertilizer,” he said. “It is too expensive.”
“That is what you said 4 years ago about potatoes. Today, everyone uses it, and everyone’s crops are much better!” This is a continuing story out here. The KNZRT guys keep harping on ideas until the people believe. Eventually, it seems, they come around.
Since the field, we’ve moved into the front lawn of the very attractive local school. In the courtyard there is a bust of a Kyrgyz man, and where we are sitting, off to the right, there is a giant WWII memorial. There is a big silver statue of a soldier in the middle, the dates 1941 and 1945, underlined with the text, “No one will not forget nothing.” (In the Kyrgyz language, opposites to not logically negate each other, as in English. Instead, a sentence is considered incorrect if the negatives do not match, as they do in the sentence above.)
Now, we are talking with 7 women from two goat groups started two years ago. They are telling us about how many goats they were given, the kidding rates, how they sold the cashmere, and what they’d like to turn their investment into in the future.
