BfR People
In November of that year, Larissa became the first teacher from Eurasia to attend an Ecology Action workshop in Willits and serve a short internship. Meanwhile, Carol traveled to Novosibirsk to get acquainted with other Ecodom staff, including Sasha Avrorin and Igor Ogorodnikov. Returning to Palo Alto, Carol worked with Larissa before her departure to co-author successfully a grant proposal to ISAR, which was running a USAID-funded cooperative grants program. The Ecodom/Ecology Action grant funded several workshops held in Novosibirsk, computer equipment, some translating work, and a major experiment that showed Biointensive vegetable yields at 83% to 230% greater than the control groups. The test results were detailed and well documented in a report that is available from bountifulgardens.com.
In July 1997, Larissa attended the 5-Day Teacher Workshop in Willits. A month later, with support from Ecology Action, Larissa co-presented with Carol Cox a major workshop for 55 teachers, journalists, professors, and dacha gardeners. Hosted by Ecodom, the workshop was held in Akademgorodok/Novosibirsk. During her years of teaching in Siberia, Larissa taught more than 1500 people, and adapted GB techniques to Siberian climate and soil conditions. Sasha assisted Larissa in the early years of teaching GB, but became the main presenter when Larissa's work at nonprofit support organizations took her away from the garden. Further deepening his GB knowledge, Sasha attended a 3-Day Workshop in Willits in 1999 during an architectural tour of the western US that was conducted and sponsored by Alan Buckley. Cooperating with the Siberian Ecological Foundation, Sasha presented workshops in the Altai region in the late 1990s, in Maikop in Southern Russia, and in Novo-Sin'kovo and St. Petersburg in 1999 and 2001, the later three with BfR's support. During all this activity, the Avrorins' 600-square-meter dacha plot in Akademgorodok became a model GB garden! Alas, when Larissa was offered a position directing a program to establish community foundations in Russia at the UK-based Charities Aid Foundation in Moscow, the Avrorins were obliged to pass their GB dacha plot on to other gardeners. An outcome of Larissa's work at CAF can be viewed at vimeo.com/51892940 . It is a documentary produced by the Avrorins' son Dmitry ("Dima") about a coastal town in the Russian Far East which has benefited from grants from a community foundation that Larissa helped to set up. Before and after their move to Moscow, Sasha worked to facilitate further publications of Russian translations of Ecology Action's books on GROW BIOINTENSIVE. He collaborated with the publisher of the second Russian edition of How to Grow More Vegetables?, and managed the transfer of the remaining copies to Moscow after his and Larissa's move there. In Moscow, he became Director of the Vozvraschenie Historical-Literary Society, which publishes the writings of returned gulag prisoners. He edited the Russian translation of The Sustainable Vegetable Garden, and worked toward its commercial publication by the society. However, that project was not completed due to Sasha's return to working in physics. A glimpse into the cutting-edge research that he and other Russian physicists are conducting into the phenomenon of neutrinos -- lowering telescopic sensors through the ice in the middle of Lake Baikal in the dead of winter -- can be viewed at vimeo.com/52209451 . In their limited time, Larissa and Sasha have started a small GB garden at their new dacha near Moscow. They stay in contact with Carol, and even managed a brief visit to Ojai in 2012 during a stay with Dima, who now lives with his wife and small son near San Diego.