Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER FOUR
THE VILLAGE ECONOMY
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Page 46
cultivation is still to produce food for one's own household.
Animals are an equally vital part of the village economy. For draught, the villagers used mainly oxen and water buffaloes. The milk of the cows of both is a valuable item of diet, very often eaten as yoghurt, and their dung is the main source of fuel. Occasionally they are sold for meat, or ceremonially eaten in the village. In Elbashï, in recent years, horses have partially replaced oxen as draught animals. People say there are about a hundred teams of horses in the village now, though oxen or water buffaloes are still commoner. Most households own a few sheep, and many own small flocks. In Sakaltutan, one or two men owned flocks of up to forty or fifty, and in Elbashï one or two up to two hundred. The sheep, (the karamanlï breed), are small, hardy and have large fat tails. They are kept as much for their milk and their tails as for their wool and meat. Chickens are to be seen everywhere - scavenging in the latrines, or messing in the houses. Some people keep pigeons for meat and manure.
Agricultural Work
The technical processes in Sakaltutan are still almost entirely traditional. The plough in common use is the usual light wooden Middle East plough (Morrison (1938) Chap. II, figs 21, 23; Aran (1938) p. 86, fig. 33), seed is sown by hand, reaping is, done partly by sickle, which the women wield, and partly by the scythe, a fairly recent innovation used almost exclusively by men. Villages to the east were in 1950 said still to be using only sickles. The crops are threshed by driving a special sledge, the underside of which is studded with flints, round and round over the grain. It is drawn by oxen or horses, or even by donkeys. This not only threshes, but chops the straw up fine. Straw is always stored and fed to animals in this chopped form. People were incredulous when I said that animals in England eat straw in the stalk. They winnow simply by tossing the chopped straw, chaff and grain into a breeze. Transport is by two-wheeled ox-cart, similar to those depicted on Hittite monuments. The axle turns with the solid wheels, making a screeching squeak against the frame if the cart is loaded. Eight households had European-type steel ploughs
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