Cappadocian Farmers

Cappadocian Farmers






Grapes Drying, Vineyard and Cone Houses, Cappadocia, Anatolia, Turkey, Asia Minor, Asia


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My trip last week to Cappadocia prompted ambivalent emotions in me. The beauty of the landscape and the hospitality of the people there made me nostalgic for the rolling sand hills of North Carolina and the soft mountains of East Tennessee where I spent my childhood. I suddenly missed the farmers and the crafts people who made their lives there.

When I saw the women and men of Central Anatolia tending their fields, I was washed by nostalgia for my childhood farm life. I have never forgotten the demands or the tedium of agriculture: You cannot tell a cow ready for milking, “Hey, Elsie, I will get around to it; maybe tomorrow.” Rather, farmers' schedules are set by forces outside themselves. My boyhood was clocked by daily chores that allowed no postponing and no negotiating. One simply did what must be done. Responsibility lay in meeting those demands, regardless of the weather or unexpected guests or oversleeping.



Perhaps those memories add to my impatience with the excuses of my students -- they offer so many reasons for why their paper is late or why they did not have time to read their homework. “Life is tough,” I tell them. “Get on with it.”

So many farming tasks are unbelievably boring. Facing at 6 o'clock in the morning a five acre field of six-week-old corn that needs hoeing and weeding is daunting and dispiriting. The rows stretch endlessly, and the Johnson grass and stickweed are clever at hiding right at the corn's roots and holding on to the soil with all their might. The sky is empty except for high clouds.

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