Vegetables grown from rubble: local humanitarian aid volunteers changing lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine
Last summer I met Iryna and Lyuda in the village of Dovhenke, about 15 miles south of Izyum, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. The area had been occupied by Russian forces for most of 2022.
In her bombed-out home Iryna told me she was born and raised in the village, as were her parents before her. During the fighting her roof was smashed in and most of the inside damaged.
“My son Roman was killed by the shelling but it was too dangerous to retrieve his body for another month after that,” she said. She showed me his grave behind her house, marked with his name and date of death, April 16, 2022. He was 38 years old.
Lyuda tends to her crops in a field once covered in mines
About 100 yards down the road Lyuda told me how, when the Russians left, the fields were covered in mines. Astonishingly, she dug up the mines on the land around her house by hand, with the help of her husband.
It took them a month of extremely dangerous, delicate, and exhausting work to de-mine the land. She showed me a pile of parachute bombs and various other mines she and her husband pulled from the earth. At that time, she was starting to grow vegetables.
I went back to visit Iryna and Lyuda this month, more than a year since I was there last. It’s a remote place, a few hours drive from Kharkiv city, and largely deserted. There used to be 500 people in the village, now there are around 30.
This was the scene of intense fighting throughout much of 2022 and 2023, and is still shelled by Russian forces. Burnt-out tanks and other vehicles lay strewn across the fields. Immediately in front of Iryna’s house is a blue car completely destroyed by a Ukrainian tank. Russian soldiers had been in it.
Iryna’s house is in much better condition now. “Volunteers repaired the roof before the winter last year, and many of the rooms,” she says as she shows me around. Chipboard panels now line the ceilings and inside walls, some windows have been replaced, and she has two solar panel for power. It’s still not totally fixed but it’s much more liveable.
Author Brian Dooley (left) enjoys a piece of Iryna’s homegrown corn
She grows vegetables, apples and walnuts now and says she tries to stay positive. In the garden, she draws water from the well her father built. “There isn’t much internet connection so I get news from a small radio,” she says as she makes me coffee, incredulous I want it without sugar.
She has to rely on humanitarian aid provided by volunteers for some food, and reminders of the war are never far away. She still hears the thuds of missiles hitting the city of Izyum, and drones passing over her house at night, but she is confident, thanks to the repairs, that she can make it through the coming winter.
A volunteer NGO based in Kharkiv city that repaired her house now also provides Lyuda with a market for her vegetables. Volonterska was set up in Kharkiv in response to Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and reports having helped over 100,00 people.
Meriam Yol told me that while many people fled the city when the invasion happened, she and some friends decided to stay and establish the NGO. Most came from marketing and advertising backgrounds. “We had no experience in doing any sort of humanitarian aid,” she said. “But we learned, and now we’ve brought medical help to tens of thousand of people, and repaired over 100 roofs on homes.”
They focus their help on the Izyum area of Kharkiv, and when they visited Lyuda she gave them as a gift a handful of corncobs she had grown.
Humanitarian aid volunteer Meriam tends to the shop
From there they had the idea of trying to sell vegetables from Lyuda and other farmers from the area in outlets in Kharkiv city, and a few months ago opened a shop at the hipster food court 7sklad near the city center.
Lavka Deokupatsii (The Deoccupation Shop) sells tomatoes, apples, peppers, potatoes, leeks, honey and other goods from farmers whose land was occupied by Russian forces. The corn comes from Lyuda, and is very popular. Local restaurants use it and it’s even made into ice cream (“tastes a bit like strawberry,” assures Yol).
In Dovhenke, Lyuda showed me around her four fields of corn, and the small tractor donated by an international humanitarian organization, MercyCorps. She says she’s confident they managed to dig up all the mines because they’ve been working the land for two years now without incident.
Lyuda (left) and author Brian Dooley (right) in Dovhenke
Her house — home to 40 (forty) cats — is still badly damaged, and although windows have been repaired and she has wifi, there is still a long way to go to for it to be fully restored. “My biggest fear is that the Russians will come back and occupy us again,” she says.
The crops this year have been poor, a reality faced by farmers across the south and east of the country, when temperatures stayed cold for much of the spring and then became intensely hot.
But now, thanks to Volonterska, she has a distributor for her corn. “There are around 17-20 farmers in our network,” says Yol. “And about six people run the shop, and six more who repair roofs. We want people to take responsibility themselves, to help themselves where they can, and not just wait for handouts. This way we can help them sell what they grow.”
