Zavyalovo is a large village in Western Siberia two hours from Novosibirsk.  I arrived by bus with two German students also heading for the same place. We crammed onto a bus which was already full, but more and more kept squeezing on so that by the time we set off along the bumpy track, we were all awkwardly hanging in each other’s faces, breathing in an alcoholic air. Everyone looked old and had large hands and fat fingers, and even the teenagers had furrowed brows.

We arrived at Red Bench, a set up describing itself online as a ‘family project’, which turned out to be more family than project. Three year old Vera, all curls and brown face, showed us around the ramshackled collection of wooden huts and outbuildings, and we were then taken into the yurt for lunch. Dreadlocked Dima, Vera’s father, put on some music (my heart sank when I heard the tuneless sounds pumping out of the speakers) and with a sad smile he talked about the village’s dislike of hippies.

We guests have a little wooden house of our own, no running water but a very effective stove, thick walls and doors padded with quilts. The kitchen has a small old fashioned wooden sink that you fill up from an electric pump outside; it empties into a bucket which must then be emptied into the toilet, a rather nice squatting hole housed in what looks like a brightly coloured chicken house.Every night we water the seedlings on the window sills, brush the earwigs off our clothes and beds, and check ourselves for ticks.

The village has a tarmacked main road, but is otherwise a sprawling mass of wooden buildings. Of chief importance among these, especially in winter, is the banya: ‘No, we don’t have shower, we have BANYA’  said Alya (mother and manager of Red Bench), as though mentioning something sacred. It is a small wooden hut with two rooms; in the larger one is a stove to heat a large vat of water which fills the room with steam. You go in and lie down on the wooden bench and soon begin sweating, the air so thick and fragrant with pine and birch it can be difficult to breathe, and you just relax. The ritual is supposed to include being beaten with branches of birch, but I haven’t tried this yet. When it all gets too much, you splash yourself with cold water and go into the other room to cool down, or better still, outside to rub yourself in snow. It is such a warming, relaxing, cleansing experience,  I don’t know how I will possibly be able to go back to showers!

We are supposed to be fed here, but people are poor, life is tough , there isn’t much food. We eat leaves from the garden for lunch – dandelion, nettles, chives, rhubarb (or some non-poisonous version). Vera and I wander around the garden eating all the weeds, spitting them out if they taste inedible or poisonous. And we mustn’t be too enthusiastic in our weeding of the fruit bushes or there won’t be enough to eat.

However, aside from tinned peas and beans, the food is nearly always excellent – warm milk from the cow next door, a neighbours eggs, a friend’s sourdough bread. Best of all is the honey – thick, dark, flowery honey from the Altai mountains, and there is an entire milk churn of it. It has become a drug.

This is the time of year for birch juice. You tap a hole in the trunk, stick a straw in, hang a bottle underneath, and by the end of the day you have a few litres. It is very refreshing, slightly sweet, but doesn’t keep well, so at the moment we are turning the leftover into kvas.

To begin with our work was to clear the field. It was satisfying, idyllic, pastoral work,  where we could break for birch juice by the river as the birds of prey flew low overhead. But we’re not allowed to work too hard (‘it’s not our way here’). Each day we have a nominal job, like weeding or cooking or babysitting, and then we have leisure time for as long as the children aren’t screaming.

Just before midnight at Easter, I went to the small village church which was completely packed. I squeezed in and stood listening to the choir of village women warbling in a rather lovely way as the priests intoned. A group of men carrying processional icons and loaves of bread gathered at the back, and we all poured out into the starry night carrying candles, bells ringing, and we walked around the church singing. We re-entered and the Easter liturgy began. At some point I decided I had had enough, but just at that moment an old lady came up with a skirt for me to wear, saying it was a holiday and insisting I stay with such a kind smile I couldn’t leave. When the women rushed forward for the eucharist, arms crossed on their chests, I realised I knew them from the bus.

Once we had all kissed the silver cross and the priest’s sleeve, benches suddenly appeared in the middle of the church and everyone brought out their Easter food – homemade kullichs and paschas decorated with lit candles, painted eggs, even chocolate eggs, loaves of bread and sweet buns. We and all the food were sprinkled with holy water and everyone shouted the Easter responses, looking so happy, and then everything was packed away as quickly as it had appeared, and we went out into the early morning light.

We were allowed the day off work, so we lay outside under the perfect blue sky. Later, we drove cross-country to Zavyalovo lake for an Easter picnic, past beaver’s dens, birch forests and taiga . They say Russian cars are built for Russian roads, but even this track was too much when we came to one particularly deep ditch. So our driver got out, picked up a tree trunk, dropped it in the dip, jumped on it to smash it into pieces, filled the dip, and drove over it – all in under a minute. We finally reached the lake, which is small by Russian standards, but is 100 km wide and is called a sea. Until the mountain snow melts, the lake is emptier than usual, revealing long beaches and enormous trunks of driftwood

The next day it snowed. I and my new French housemate retreated indoors to the fire, but the Russian men just lit the banya and went fishing – it’s the best time to go: no mosquites and no ticks. But it turns out that part of the river has no fish.