Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

ber of horses far below the needs of the people, and American tractors were sent over to en- able the people to raise more food. During the first year of his stay in Russia, he had general charge of recon- struction work; in the second year when additional tractor- men had been sent across, he directed the tractor work in the Molotschna and the Crimea and also superintended relief operations in the Molotschna. He returned to America July 20, 1924, and retired to his fruit ranch in southern California; but soon his help was needed among the Mennonites that came to Mexico, and he took up the work there, having given most of his time to their wel- fare, until the fall of 1926. PLOWING SCENES G. G. Hiebert An experience which painted a mental picture for me that has impressed me permanently is the scene when we began plowing in the South Ukraine with the first twenty- five Fordson tractors that had been shipped to Russia by the Mennonite Central Committee. The people there did not have sufficient horse power to put in crops enough to feed their families. (In the village “Fuerstenau” they did not have as much as one horse.) This was in one of the richest agricultural districts in the Ukraine. We had seventeen tractors plowing in one large community field sUIBIZQ 9Y) UL OUIBIYL) ‘BUYOSJO[OJ_ 94} YIOAA WOLjonAsuodyY Jo Juepudjurtodny UI Igek JMO TOF SuLpsoj-p[TyO Jo osavyo uy LYHEHIH “9D “O UAAOH ‘SUN GNV “W ‘d SONJTATIO’ “YI “WV 9Y} JO read 4se] oy} Suranp BAVUIBG UL AUIBAY A OI UL UOTJONAJSMOdEY pUB Jor[oy JO 10,0011 UOoNASUODIY pue jJorpey JO LOJooaAIC] UAdGOA “DO “H UACHOUHOS THINVG SS PERSONAL REMINISCENCES 357 and when the people (most of them former well-to-do: farmers) saw the wide swath of rich, black loam turned over each time the plow passed, the former farmer spirit in some of its glory was revived and an expression of hope came over their faces, as they remarked: ‘Oh, that I could some day plow my field like that.” Opposite this field, where the tractors worked, in dif- ferent directions, close to the villages, there were plows being drawn by perhaps a horse and a cow, two cows and a horse, or four cows; and often the four owners of the four-cow team were among our spectators, as well as others who had neither cow nor horse, and who depended entirely for the next year’s crop on their share of the tractor-plowed ground which was only a few acres for each at the most. It was surprising how many acres were seeded to grain with so little horsepower; but the cows could not work in the field in the heat of the day and supply the family with milk; neither could the farmer produce good crops on land that had merely been scratched instead of being plowed or cultivated in a good workman-like manner. It was almost miraculous how many more horses there were in the Colonies the second year than there were the first year of the relief work. Many families sold at ridiculously lo