Steppes of Anatolia

Steppes of Anatolia

                We walked on mountains of Aegian Region, travelled in the green fields of Marmara. Now, we are in the steppes of Central Anatolia.                 We sent our last telegraph from Jade farm (stop). Just after, we worked in the construction of adobe house for two days in Yeryüzü Eco-village. This was the fourth construction we have participated since the beginning of our journey. Now we are ready to settle.                 Yeryüzü eco-village named their home as “Burcu”. That’s the name of the architect. We were together with a crowded, nice group of people… We have posted their photos on our website though. Also we ran into “Recognizing Plants Around Us While Walking In Nature” event. With guides from Zeytinburnu Medical Plants Gardens we have examined the plants with their names in Latin, which I can not remember now, and categorized as what is edible, which is drunk as tea, which one directly kills us. It was nice. At night, we sang songs and danced while playing bottles.                 Then we went back to Jade Farm as we promised before. Actually, we were planning to make Tarhana Soup there but we couldn’t. By the way, we spent a couple of days by working in the garden and asking questions to Berin. Berin’s farm was so green, because there was too much moisture. Humid every night. Also there are too much caterpillars this year. We were hearing their sound while they were eating leafs. They will become American Butterfly when they grow. As they don’t have any natural hunter up here, they ate all the trees. American Butterfly imperialism!                ...
Bayramiç Yeniköy

Bayramiç Yeniköy

I wanted to pluck up my courage and start writing for a long time. I couldn’t start anyway both because of my lack of experience in writing and because of my willing to write about more technical information we gain about natural life rather than telling memories and stories. But for me, the most important point of our travel that I want to tell is this precious knowledge. I hope, I get the show on the road at last. Yet, there are many things I want to tell and I collected. I want to start from our first experience in a farm: Bayramiç Yeniköy. Sezgin has written about the life here before (Off The Road). So, I will just mention some subject that attracted me. In Yeniköy, production is made by ecologic methods, without using artificial fertilizer and pesticides. Many kinds of wheat are planted, especially those under the risk of extinction, and sent to the mill to make wonderful bread. The most important thing here was its principle of not consuming anything that is not produced or gathered in local. When we were in there, there were just beans, peas, onions and different kinds of herbs in the garden. In our first days, we were thinking about what to cook as we didn’t get used to it. But after a while, trying to be contended with what we have made us more creative. Yes, we were eating beans everyday, but in many different ways. We were creating different tastes that we had never tasted before (farci with Mizuna). And of course everyting was so natural and delicious. In...
Eco-volunteer

Eco-volunteer

Our hands are touching the earth and growing seeds with other hands. We think all together and grow together.Our dreams meet and our hopes grow. Our hearts, minds and hands come together; and we realise! We all meet around the dining table of the earth. Then we open our arms and immediately another hand catches one of our hands. While we are on our way to learn from nature and people who acts with nature, we visit communities interested in ecology and ecologic farms to join their work voluntarily. There are a lot of organizations connecting people who want to work voluntarily with communities who need volunteers. Via these organizations, you can contact with farms and communities to support them using your skills according to their needs in return for food and a place to sleep. Also you get a greal deal experiences about sustainable life and organic farming at the end of this process. Working in farms this way is called Woofing. It is named by one of the most popular platforms in this field, WWOOF. WWOOF, World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, was founded by an English woman Sue Coppardand and active in almost every country. You should check the WWOOF web site of the country you want to work. For example, you can get information from wwoofgreece.org for Greece, wwoofindia.org for India. You get the right of access to telephone and e-mail information of farm residents to contact after paying membership fee (15-30 Euros) in each country. Any farming information is not required to join. In Turkey, the project is led under the name of TaTuTa (Eco-Agro Tourism and Voluntary Knowledge and...