Penza, 15 June 2016. PenzaNews. A cattle and vegetable farm will appear in Staraya Potlovla village in the Penza region to help fund the restoration and functioning of the St. Martyr Anna Church, the chairman of the church’s council Alexander Mramornov told PenzaNews.

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“A village church must have a source of funding to sustain itself. We have been restoring it for 2.5 years so far, and finding sponsors is very difficult. The Penza region provides us practically no help. Since the church has a sort of a countrywide importance as the only church dedicated to St. Alla, we manage to collect small donations here and there and use them for the works,” he said.

According to him, the cattle and vegetable farm will create a source of constant income for the church.

As Alexander Mramornov clarified, this requires a certain sum as minimal investments, and they plan to attract them via a Planeta.ru crowdfunding campaign.

“We wanted to apply for state support to agricultural enterprises from the Penza region Ministry of Agriculture, but apparently religious organizations cannot apply. We need to register a family-operated farm for that, and this is not our format of operation,” he explained.

As he clarified, the farm will be partially funded through loans, and partially through the planned minimum of 318,000 rubles through the crowdfunding campaign.

“This includes the most expensive parts – building a shed for the animals to stay clean, and fence off a small patch of land for cattle feeding and vegetable farming,” Alexander Mramornov explained.

According to him, there farm already has a starting vegetable patch and its first flock of 5 goats and 4 sheep.

“It will be a small goat and sheep farm. We plan to increase it to 20-25 animals, and produce milk, milk products, and cheese. If all goes well, we could late expand to other villages of our religious area – just seven villages in the Kolyshley area [Staraya Potlovka, Chebotaevka, Novaya Potlovka, Lyubovka, Panovka, Davydovka, and Golytsino],” he explained.

According to the representative of the St. Martyr Anna’s Church, contributors for the farm will receive small presents.

“Donators of the smallest sums will receive leaflets, souvenirs, and gratitude. Bigger donators will receive food baskets from our cattle and vegetable farm. And the biggest ones will be for the cultural enterprises that we are holding,” Alexander Mramornov summed up.