HELP SAVE UKRAINIAN FAMILY FARM

Hello, all, Masha here again, as promised.

If you’re reading this, there’s a high chance you have already been a part of my family’s journey to safety in war-torn Ukraine. Now that they have returned to their village of Sukholchchya, they are attempting to rebuild their lives and assure their future safety and the safety of their village–whatever may come next.

I wanted to share with you a message from them about the support they now need in this next chapter. What follows was written by my father’s wife, Khrystina, and translated by me.

Hi! We’re a family from Ukraine. We have received life-changing support through you all on GoFundMe before, and we hope now to ask for your help in renewing a venture that has promise both for us and for our community.

Before the war, we had one of the largest collections of hot peppers in Ukraine, which enabled us to show Ukrainians the joy of spicy dishes from many different spice-based cuisines. We would also give free consultations on how to grow these tricky little plants and bring them into one’s cooking, partly through running a video blog where we share the best recipes to experience the hot peppers!

Because of all this, our unique hot sauces became quite popular not just on a local level but also outside of Ukraine, giving us hope that this whole pepper operation would someday become sustainable not just for ourselves and our friends but as a business.

Here comes the difficult part of the story. In November of 2021, we started hopefully preparing for a new season. We planted more than 3,000 new pepper bushes (many more than ever before!), developed new recipes for a new collection of sauces and were ready for an exciting new start.

Within mere hours, the fascist troops of the Russian army occupied our villages and started bombing and shooting at peaceful civilians. The attackers instantly raided all grocery stores. Electricity, water, and any phone signal disappeared.

In the following month, there were moments when we thought we might not make it. There were moments when a tank was pointed at the windows of our house. We had often buried our phones to avoid them being destroyed or discovered by the fascist forces. We feared for our lives and the survival of our community.

The invaders walked from house to house, taking appliances, food, and furniture. They were executing civilians and raping women and children. We had to live in the basement for over a month to avoid being shot. They shot dogs even in cages, so we had to take our German Shepherd to the basement and duct tape his mouth to prevent him from barking.

During all 37 days of the occupation, we didn’t have an opportunity to get away: all bridges had been blown up, and the Russian tanks blocked all roads.

In the end, we got out thanks to our child Masha, who, against all these odds, secured a car through the organization SafeBow, which picked us up several kilometers away from our home. We took two backpacks, our dog DeNiro, our cat Mozart, and a couple of pepper seeds. We didn’t know where we were going or whether we would ever return home…

Although we survived, our agricultural support system did not. While we were sheltering in a small town called Lutsk, all of our crops died.

The plants couldn’t persist alone through a lack of water and light. Not only did we lose the crop and the equipment, but our entire collection of different peppers we had been cultivating for several years also died.

At this moment, in August 2022, we are looking at a somewhat more livable future. The Russian troops have been pushed out of our region, and the threat of a repeat invasion is minimal, so in this fragile sense of safety, we decided to return home and attempt to resurrect our farm.

But as we return home, we find ourselves left entirely without resources, financial or otherwise. The farm was our only source of income. We now need to move extremely fast or lose everything.

Before September, we must install greenhouses and order all the needed seeds from our wonderful, supportive friends worldwide. We have to begin now to recover our crops and start anew.

(A brief, important side note! If you run a farm, own an agricultural business, or have any other access to pepper seeds, we would be so grateful for any seeds you could share with us! Our collection before the war contained so many species that are not common here in Ukraine, and that rareness was part of our success. Any seeds you may have in America, in unoccupied Europe, or ANYWHERE in the world would be a fantastic help to us! You can send them to Masha, PO Box 158, Tivoli, New York 12583 – they will bring them to the farm!)

Since winters in Ukraine are cold, the greenhouse must have an automated heater and a professional light system. For that, we need roughly $15,000. We understand that this is a considerable amount, but there will be a purpose for every cent of every donation. Alongside the peppers, we hope to plant and grow staple crops to sustain us and those around us–crops like potatoes, tomatoes, corn, carrot, and onions which can feed us even in the worst of times. It will help not just us but, in time, our entire village, giving us the means to continue living and eating even if food supplies and grocery stores are once again destroyed. Here is a full breakdown of everything we need to get the farm back on its feet.

We also want to mention another terrible loss–another part of the high recovery cost. When we visited the business where we had initially bought the materials to make our greenhouse, we found that the Russian troops had destroyed it. Luckily, the family who ran it has survived, and we will continue to work with them, but of course, the costs of materials have been impacted by this devastation.

As a Thank You, we are happy to make our sauce & spice assortment available for pre-order! We’ll take your name down and contact you via phone or email, get your shipping info, and keep you updated! Everything will ship in February/March of 2023.

A $50 or more donation guarantees a pre-order of our special Hell Confiture (Адский Конфитюр) sauce!

With a $100+ donation, you can pre-order our Hell Confiture sauce, the famous Crazy Explosion (Безумный Взрыв) sauce, AND we’ll throw in two spices: the Spicy Paprika (Острая Паприка) spice and the Fire Lemon (Огненный Лемон) spice.

If you donate over $300, you can pre-order three of our most popular sauces: Hell Confiture, Tender Confiture (Нежный Конфитюр), and Crazy Explosion, which all come with a bonus of four spices: Spicy Paprika, Fire Lemon, Grill Party! (Гриль Вечеринка!) and Habanero Dance (Танец Хабанеро).

A $500+ donation gets you a pre-order of all sauces AND all spices!