O.W.A.H.O - Project

Introduction:

The economical activity in which most of the inhabitants of the Marmaris-Datça Peninsula are involved is agriculture. In sharp contrast to the agricultural methods common in the rest of Turkey, the way farmers till the soil in this part of the country is still highly ecological. The fresh breezes and the high concentration of oxygen are facts for which Marmaris and Datça are famous. But one less known reason why the air you breathe here is so pure is that it is not polluted with all kinds of pesticides, insecticides and chemical fertilizers as in the rest of rural Turkey!

Another feature of agriculture on the Marmaris-Datça Peninsula is the lack of monocultures. Everybody who has visited Turkish Thrace or the vast steppes of Central-Anatolia has seen the endless fields of wheat. Everybody who has visited the Çukurova around Adana has seen the over-intensive agriculture with four or more harvests every year, with first the winter wheat, second tomatoes and peppers, third lentils and chickpeas and fourth corn, all on the same fields, year in, year out. Quite opposite to these practices are those on the Marmaris-Datça Peninsula. Here vast areas of the same agricultural production do not exist. The natural and cultural lands are highly diverse: mountains with pinewoods turn into valleys full of foliaged trees, then again there are mountains but this time dry and barren. Small plains lie in between those wooded and barren slopes. Small as they already are, they are once again divided in parcels with olive and almond trees. Around the houses, everybody grows his/her own vegetables and fruit trees. The main agricultural products for the markets the farmers on the Marmaris-Datça Peninsula produce are olives, olive oil, almonds and honey. In the old days, wine was also made locally. This tradition had almost vanished in the region, to be revived recently by some daring and inventive farmers.

The ecological structure of the agriculture on the Marmaris-Datça Peninsula has resulted in cultural features never experienced in the monoculture rural areas of Turkey. Where people use a lot of chemicals every disease and every decrease in harvest output is translated into chemical terms: "We didn't use enough medicine" (as agricultural chemicals are called in Turkey), or: "Next year we shall use more medicine on our lands". 

A sharp contrast to these analyses of farmers in Thrace and Central-Anatolia, are the customs of the peasant-farmers on the Marmaris-Datça Peninsula. When harvests are low farmers say it's because of scant rainfall in the preceding winter. If an olive branch dies, it is cut off the tree and its leaves are given as a delicacy to a favourite or a sick goat. If the branches of an almond tree start rotting, during a period of weeks men and women gather around the tree to finally conclude that it is sick because of old age, or because of poor soil. The tree will be cut down; her wood will serve the stoves during winter. And at the same spot a young almond tree will be planted. And still only dung gathered from sheep and goats is used as fertiliser.

Another interesting feature of the agricultural cycles on the Peninsula is that the main crops, almonds and olives, are harvested in different seasons, in summer and in winter. This makes that farmers on the Peninsula have a fairly distributed working cycle over the year, as where their colleagues in Central Anatolia and Thrace have to work very hard during one season, to go into a kind of hibernation during winter.

The first stage of the OWAHO Project is to inform travellers on the harvesting times of all the products of agriculture on the Marmaris-Datça Peninsula.  We know the right places and the right times.  As operators for WHL we are starting to work on an agricultural calendar for the main products of the Marmaris-Datça Peninsula. We will put this on our website (have a look at our Weather Page).

The second stage of the OWAHO Project is to encourage the local community to continue their ecological agricultural practises. We try to realize this through the co-operation between farmers and motivated travellers. By this we think to expand understanding and knowledge about the advantages of ecological practices within individuals and groups from different cultural backgrounds. For the next season we hope to be ready for a work pool program in which motivated and funny local people invite motivated and funny travellers to work together for half a day, a full day or longer. This will facilitate the exchange of knowledge, skills, and visions, all in a pleasant and relaxed way. Language shouldn't be a problem as Turkish people generally are pantomime experts.

Activities will be half day (4 hours) or full-day (8 hours) long. Half-Day Activities include Lunch; Full-Day Activities include Lunch and Dinner.  We charge a fee of  €uro 9, for Half-Day Activities and  €uro 16, for Full-Day Activities. Parts of these charges cover our administration costs. Of the rest 50% will go directly to the farmer-families involved, the other 50% has to be used for Collective Projects for Stimulating Ecological Agriculture in the Region. It may be spent on Education, on Marketing of Ecological Products, on Expanding the Range of Ecological Products to be cultivated in the region, on Stimulating New (or not yet existing in the region) Ecological Products, like Almond Juice, Metheglin, etc.

The annual agricultural calendar  at the Marmaris - Datca Peninsula

Jan   --   May                   Production of olive oil

March - April                   Collecting "çağlar" i.e. unripe but tasteful and very expensive almonds

March - April -May          Trimming almond- and olive trees.  Manuring the fruit trees.  Honey production

April - May - June            Collecting fresh herbs like thyme, sage and oregano. Honey-production (*)

August - September        Harvesting  almonds and preparing them for the market by peeling    

September                       Harvesting of fresh laurel-leaves. Peeling almonds fort he market

October-November          Preparing almonds for the market by peeling

November - December    Harvesting of olives. Pickling table olives.

(*) Honey production starts in our destination early as mid March, continuing through June, then most of the beekeepers move to high mountains further east to collect nectarine for their bees there. After some good rainfall in September beekeepers coming back to our destination have another month or 1½ month for collecting nectarine.

Half - Day Program :
07.00 (summer)/08.00(winter): Arriving at the Address of the Farmers
07.00/08.00 - 11.00/12.00 :  Harvesting and Crossing Cultural boundaries
11.00/12.00 - 12.30/13.30 : Lunch 

Full - Day Program : 
07.00 (summer)/08.00(winter): Arriving at the Address of the Farmers
07.00/08.00 - 11.00/12.00 :  Harvesting and Crossing Cultural boundaries
11.00/12.00 - 12.30/13.30 : Lunch 
12.30/13.30 - 16.00/17.00 :  Harvesting and Crossing Cultural boundaries
16.30/17.30 -17.00/18.00 : Travelling to the Farmyard of the Farmers
17.00/1800 - :  Dinner and After Dinner