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Great video of Nadejda and Valeriu. It's interesting that they're growing greens: salads are not a regular part of Moldovan cuisine, but this may be partly because the water supply isn't clean enough (yet) for growing greens.

My host family used maybe one application of insecticide and a pollinating hormone on their tomatoes, plus they had a couple of weeks in February when they had to get up in the middle of the night to keep the fire going in the hothouse.

Even when it's not organic, agriculture in Moldova is "less intensive" than in other parts of the world. I ran across the phrase as an explanation of why there such a big variety of birds there.

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Hey Connie! Thanks for the comment! Salads are much more part of the diet in the city. People might not grow some greens for themselves in the garden but it is a valuable cash crop for people selling them to supermarkets, etc. But also, tastes change as well.

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Yep - my host family's city-dwelling daughter used to bring us salads. They ate them, but were a bit skeptical. It reminds me of a friend who left Romania for Israel decades ago who used to say that lettuce, etc. was animal food (vs. the tomato-onion-cucumber salad.)

Geese love greens (in fact think I saw our goslings being released into the greenhouse to eat the weeds; not sure whether they didn't like the tomatoes or were too small to reach them.)

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