The fields around Fethiye are all zoned and numbered as part of the City Plan. In it are drawn the roads and parks and schools alongside the residential plots.  In other words the whole area could be described as one large building plot and buildings spring up apparently at random, dotted around the unseen grid but actually located with all the precision that GPS can provide. These fields are, in most cases, still being farmed as smallholdings or greenhouses.  Many are sold and await the bulldozer, some are entangled by Turkish inheritance law and many may never be sold, despite their astronomical and ever increasing prices, because the owners are happy doing what they have always done.  Consequently, while living in a modern villa or apartment in a Turkish town, unlike in Surbiton, it’s not at all unusual to have neighbours keepng sheep, goats, chickens and the occasional cow;  growing a crop of cauliflowers or cabbages; tending greenhouses full of tomatoes and peppers and working a donkey or two.

Shearing time in Fethiye SOLD
10″ x 8″, Acrylic on card

Last summer, I watched my neighbour hand shearing her flock of goats and sheep.  These animals are  moved to various bits of land around the neighbourhood in a complex grazing pattern that seamlessly interleaves with her neighbours. Sometimes you see them tied along a busy roadside verge, another time in a field, later fed on cuttings and scraps outside her house. If you can’t see them, you can probably smell them!  She worked long and hard that day in the heat of summer and I’m sure her flock appreciated the effort.

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