Old McDonald had a…
Amanda and I escape city life and touch grass for two weeks!
Farm!
Welcome to the latest edition of where in the world are Jovan and Amanda??? After traveling to a new city everyday in Morocco and living the city life in Istanbul, we’ve decided to change pace. So enjoy our adventure as we touch grass and reconnect with nature.
With our bags packed, flight taken, bus taken, another bus taken, and now in a strangers car, we’ve arrived in Korubükü Village: a southern Turkish city by the Mediterranean Sea.
Now don’t be alarmed. We didn’t jump into just any strangers car; it was Ali Kislak’s car. Ali owns the farm we’re now living on, which is the official version.
What we think we know: he started this farm about ten years ago, without any real farming background, and somehow turned 79,000 acres of dry, unusable land into something alive. There are herbs everywhere like sage, rosemary, thyme and fruit trees like strawberries, mulberries, and loquats - all beginning to bloom. It smells earthy and green everywhere, but depending on where you’re standing you can taste flavors of slightly sweet, sharp, and tart. That is, if you’re standing next to us on our mid afternoon walk while we’re picking and eating loquats.
What we don’t know is… almost everything else.
Within the first half hour of meeting Ali, he told us he used to be an engineer in the U.S. “90 years ago,” casually mentioned that his English was better than ours, asked if we had a marriage certificate before letting us share a room, and described the entire region, this wide, quiet stretch of mountains and sea, as “okay.”
It’s hard to explain the way he says things. There’s no hesitation. No signal that he might be joking. Every time, he speaks with full conviction, enough that you start second guessing yourself.
When we follow instructions, he’ll shake his head and self-deprecatingly blurt out “nobody listens to me” or “[people] only come here for vacation”. And if we ever say something he agrees with, he responds with “me neither”. Then sometimes, only sometimes, he smiles right after, like he’s letting you in on the fact he’s joking.
It’s comforting to have friends here who, despite all being from different parts of the world, share the same confusion. So much so that we’ve adopted little Ali-mannerisms. Did you like the sourdough bread Mark made today? “me neither”. Need to get someone’s attention? “my friend”. Did something go wrong? “Nobody listens to me”.
+Estelle, an incredibly sweet girl from France that wasn’t able to make it for the group photo this day
-
Our days all start around 8:30, but it never feels like a clean beginning.
People take their time, drifting to the meet-up point slowly, gloves on, sometimes still finishing our morning tea. There’s usually a quiet stretch before anything starts. A quick chat then boots on gravel, tarps being moved, buckets being organized, and then it starts. The scraping of metal against metal, tightening gloves that are already covered in yesterday’s dirt.
You find yourself standing in a pile of compost, breaking it apart with a shovel until it softens enough to move. Fine dust clings to your gloves, and inevitably makes its way to coat your hands as the holes in the gloves give in. Slowly but surely and slightly sleepily - all the buckets of compost get filled and get passed through the 7-human conveyor belt before making their way onto the truck bed.
Then we’re off - shovels in hand, following behind Ali as he drives to the destination point with the trees we’re planting for the day already loaded in the car.
The ground changes as we go. More open, more uneven. We get in human-conveyor belt formation again, unloading the compost and trees - placing them by to their soon to be homes. Which brings me to the (not) fun (but physically rewarding) part: digging.
Digging starts up in a different rhythm here. Press down, lift, turn the soil over, and “be efficient with your energy” Ali says. Some parts give easily, almost too easily, which keeps your spirits high. Others are packed tight, knotted with stubborn roots and rocks, and slow you down enough that you have to adjust your stance, and either lean more into it or choose a new spot as you rebuild your momentum. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
The sun shifts slowly, but you notice it in stages. At first it’s just warm. Then it settles in a bit more, sitting on your shoulders, your neck, your back. Future and current me both thank Amanda for getting me on a good routine of applying & reapplying sunscreen. On days when clouds pass over, everything feels slightly lighter without anyone saying anything about it.
The dogs are always around.
They follow us out like it’s part of their day too. Sitting on top of the compost as we fill the buckets and lying down in the fields wherever there’s shade or a patch of freshly turned dirt. Sometimes you look back and one of them is already curled up in a hole you just finished, completely settled in like it belongs there more than the tree does.
I know it sounds easy, just dig a hole. But, there’s an art to it. Understanding the slope of the land, building the walls of the holes so the trees retain water, knowing the character of the soil. You acknowledge the importance of the technique after Ali blabs about it and then follows up with “nobody listens” and that “everyone is on vacation”. But you feel his pain once he makes you fix the pivotal sin of the volunteers from last season: laziness. Suddenly, every hole you dig is a foot or two deeper, has a strong and wide base, shaped perfectly to retain a flood of water, cognizant of the terrain and surrounding ecology. You become driven not by Ali’s requests but the pain of spending 3x the effort and time to patch the laziness of last season.
Once we cross midday, we slowly ease out - driven by the exhaustion of peak sun and culmination of our labor. Tools get set down. Your hands feel dusty, and people start walking back energized by one thought: food.
The thought of lunch takes over.
Lunch on Ali Kislak’s farm is a food paradise, and not just for the exhausted farm hands (or as Amanda poetically labeled us, certified fatasses).
By the time we walk back in to wash up, there’s the most intoxicating aroma of heartiness-herbiness-beautifully seasoned meats, salads, soups, breads, and various delectable dishes suffocating our nostrils. Something warm, something cooked with love, something that doesn’t belong to a morning of dirt and sun.
While we’re out in the fields, Aalia has been cooking the entire time. Not one dish, not two. A full table of 8 or more dishes. Every day. Without fail.
There’s always a bean or lentil soup - sometimes both. Then salads, grains, roasted chicken, vegetables, mushrooms with herbs, things you didn’t expect to crave but immediately go back for. Torta espanola, meat puffs, kofta - everyday brings about new surprises. Plates start filling quickly, then filling again before you’ve even finished what’s in front of you.
It feels closer to a holiday meal than something waiting for you after a morning of digging holes.
You sit down, take a bite, and there’s this brief moment where everything slows. The heat, the work, the small frustrations of the morning all fade out a bit. You just eat.
You look around and realize most everyone is in the same state. Tired, a little dirty, but completely content and grateful.
The day continues to open up in a different way.
There’s no schedule, no expectation. People drift again, but this time with no task waiting on the other end.
Some people go for walks, eventually a few of us meet and practice yoga, others practice or learn new skills and explore interests at a leisurely pace - always with the beautiful landscape to accompany the endeavor.
And sometimes, you just lie down. Not even to take a nap. Just still, relaxing.
On our day off every week - we have the liberty to travel anywhere we want. One week we may explore an area of the Mediterranean coast and another the nearby national park. Along the way, bonding closer with our friends here and creating a little reset within our farm-reset-experience.
Let me state the obvious. Yes, after making the grand decision to quit our jobs, be professionally unemployed, and travel free from the responsibilities of work - we are now working on a farm, doing arduous labor for ~25 hours a week on a farm in exchange for food and accommodation. But, we’re keeping our bodies fit, learning agricultural skills, enjoying delicious meals, consuming our fair share of fresh herbal tea, and have an abundance of time to spend meditating, doing yoga, reading, resting, learning, writing, and doing all the wonderful things that professional unemployed people do.
Sure, some more organization, opportunities to learn from Ali, and structure would be enriching. But we’re still, very obviously to me, living in a pseudo-paradise, for free.
Gallery
