the Indiana farm where he was working in 1919.//
The animals awaken a bit after we do. First the horses and then the
cows. There are three pairs of French and Belgian workhorses that are
quite big, strong mares. The six cows are of a type that is the best in
America for milk cows and they are very docile and sweet animals.
When I was in Istanbul I never had the chance to take a cow's teat in
my hands. In England, I got my first experience and learned how to
milk a cow somewhat. Now I can do it quite well. After we milk
the cows it is breakfast time. The menu is the same every morning:
fresh milk and butter, homemade bread and a kind of doughnut that
is eaten with 'pekmez'.
//Ed. note: The dictionary meaning for 'pekmez' is
"grape juice boiled to a sugary solid or a heavy syrup."
The writer may mean maple syrup.//
At the breakfast table are the young farmer couple, their two sweet
children, an elderly grandmother and me, their Turkish worker. We
work in the field for six hours until lunchtime at noon, when a bell
tied to a pole in a corner of the house is rung to summons us. Two
hours later we're back in the field. In the evening, at around five, we
quit work, milk the cows again and give the animals feed. After that
we have evening supper and repair to our rooms between eight and
nine.
Yesterday we were busy harvesting oats, with the farmer running the
machine and me helping out. There is yet another field of oats and
one with barley still to be harvested. In the Fall we will harvest the
corn.
When I see the houses in the area and the barn painted in red ochre I'm
reminded of Turkey. But the life of a farmer here is completely
different from that of a farmer in Turkey! Our poor farmers work like
laborers! When I look at all the planted fields and the bounty God
has granted them, I feel like people are really living the good life here.
American agriculture is a lot different than England's. In fact, I
found it to be completely different. Here time and effort are allocated
carefully for a particular job. Each farmer knows how to organize his
work and the fields are worked cheaply and quickly with a machine.
Perhaps our (Turkish) farmers don't see the need for machines, but
farmers here want to be freed from hard labor and live comfortably
by doing the best and the most work in as short a time as possible.
Let's take gathering dry oats. In Turkey, we know how to do this but
we have to grab a pitchfork to load a cart or swing a sickle from
morning till evening. Here a farmer uses neither a pitchfork nor a
sickle. He cuts the oats with a machine, piles them up with a machine
and loads the oats into a truck with a very simple tool attached to the
back of the truck.
During all this activity the farmer just has to manage the animals and
the machine. When I say 'machine' people might be taken aback,
thinking that only the very rich could afford such a thing. I thought
the same, but to buy the simple and practical machine I described
above there is no need to spend more than $150 - in other words,
about thirty Turkish liras!
I thought I knew beforehand, but here I've become convinced that a
farmer doesn't have to work like a common laborer in oppressive
conditions to earn his daily bread!
//END of PART II/FINAL//
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder