The Annual Cycle
This extract of text from an ethnographic study of a farming village in central Turkey summarizes the annual farming cycle and also provides some insight into the Turk view of manual labor.
As soon as the spring comes, the men get busy. The oxen weakened by the long winter must be got into training work, and spring ploughing and sowing must be done. The ox-herds and shepherds take charge of the animals. The sheep are lambing and in each household a woman must be ready at midday to milk the ewes. Ploughing and sowing of spring wheat and barley is immediately followed by the ploughing of the year's fallow, which goes on perhaps into May, even until June, depending on individual circumstances. Meanwhile the vineyards must be dug over, and potatoes and other vegetables sown. Most of this later work is done by women.
In June, all grasses and weeds growing in odd places among the crops are cut for hay, again mostly by women. During late May and June the men are comparatively idle. In July the harvest begins, first with vetch and lentils, then with the main crops of rye and wheat. Threshing follows the reaping; reaping, threshing, and storing together last about two months of ceaseless activity for everyone; a whole household frequently works right through a moonlit night.
In September the pressure eases. As soon as rain falls on the hard baked ground—even before, if the rains are late—the men must plough again and sow their winter rye and wheat. By November there remains for the men only a visit to town to lay in supplies of coffee, paraffin, salt and so on, and perhaps cheap vegetables for the months of winter isolation, and then idleness again until the spring. He was overstating his case and, as someone commented, in two months harvesting they do four months' work; but the idea of having, like an English agricultural labourer, to work for wages day in and day out all year round was greeted with horror.
Source: Paul Sterling. (1965) The Village Economy; London: Charles Birchall & Sons, 47.
This complete Agriculture—West Asia contains 349 words. This
article contains 1,408 words (approx. 5 pages at 300
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