Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER FIVE
THE HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY
previous page
Page 83
Household Resources
The main resources of a household are threefold: land, animals, and able-bodied ploughmen. The essential equipment for living - the house and its contents - and the farming - tools, ox-cart, wooden plough, drag, - are still relatively cheap and easy to come by. In a traditional more or less self-sufficient household, production depends on a correct balance between these resources. Very roughly one working man, and one team of oxen can plough from fifteen to twenty or so dönüm, (eight to ten acres, thirty to forty decares) a year. By using three oxen, one resting while two worked, a man could improve on his output a little. Water buffalo are more efficient, and a pair of horses can plough about thirty dönüm a year. Most households kept a cow, prosperous ones up to four - a donkey or perhaps two, and some chickens. The number of sheep also is roughly tied to the scale of the household's farming operations, by the need to feed them during the winter, and to a lesser extent by the need for female labour to milk them in spring.
The economic balance in a farming household economy is illustrated by the horses in Elbashï. The increase of area under cultivation which has taken place in recent years was partly made possible, and at the same time rendered economical, by the use of teams of horses for ploughing. But horses are much more difficult to feed in the winter, and unless a man has enough land to make full use of the extra work a horse can do in the brief ploughing and harvesting seasons, the cost of feeding it for the many months of enforced idleness is not repaid. The superior foals sired by government stallions (p 77) were not retaIned to improve the village breed as the government
next page
Contents Page