we have a huge variety of seasonal activities available for you to try, including harvesting veggies from the garden, producing olive oil and wine, planting, cooking, preserving food for the winter, making yoghurt, butter, cheese, etc.  you can be a part of farm life, milking neighbors cows, riding the horse, or preparing fresh, delicious seasonal delights.  certified by IMO, switzerland, all our food is produced according to organic production methods. besides the farm work, there’s always the refreshing pool, table tennis, and backgammon! olive oil one of the highlights of our farm activities is to harvest, press, and process your own olive oil, bottle it up and even seal it with your own creative label, enough oil for you to use the entire year. we’ve developed a two or three day program (continuing through October and November) that will leave you joyfully exhausted.

on day one, you arrive and spend all day picking your own olives from our farm, around fifty kilos!  In the evening, you can relax in the bathtub, have a hammam, take a dip in the pool, or curl up by the fire with a glass of our organic wine. day two, you wake up and have a nice turkish breakfast with the family, then spend the day crushing the olives, and pressing them in our traditional stone grinder, separating the pulp from the oil.

day three, we process the oil and fill your bottles (you get to fill and cork your own bottles), creating your own label to share with your friends. you can use this all  year, or use the bottles as a perfect gift—organic extra-virgin olive oil that you made yourself!  you can either leave that day, or stay on to enjoy some of our other farm activities.

not only can you make your own olive oil, you can make your own olives, collecting and soaking them, using a variety of traditional techniques. if you’ve never tasted a freshly made organic olive, you’re in for a treat.

wine

we make a few different types of delicious organic wine, from both red and white grapes. we grow margaz white grapes, cabarnet sauvignon and shiraz red grapes. we also make wines from our oranges in the winter, and occasionally from other seasonal fruits.  if you time it right, you can help with harvesting, crushing, and pressing the grapes, making grape juice, then help with the beginnings of the wine-making process.  our red grapes ripen around august the 2^nd, white around september the 15^th.  orange season is december through march. as in all good wine-making, when the grapes are ready, we harvest them. we hope you can join us!

 
life on the farm changes by the season, observing the cycles of cold and heat, growing and resting. there’s always something to do on a farm, but it changes by the month (and sometimes even by the day!)  some possible activities you can participate in are making jams and dried fruit from our mulberries, apricots, oranges, and figs.  we can also make liquors with these fruits instead of jam, it’s just a matter of what we feel like making.  you can help make our special turkish tomato paste with a traditional recipe with the help of one of our neighbors who makes the best in the area. you can make tarhana soup, a traditional version of instant soup, a delicious staple of the village diet, or you can experience making lemonade or pomegranate concentrate. making apple cider, harvesting and grinding barley, rye or corn, and making soap are other possibilities.  it’s hard to list all of the possible activities at the farm. you just have to come experience it for yourself, let us know what your interests are, and we’ll get excited about doing a project together.

year round activities

while most farm work is seasonal, there are some activities that happen throughout the year.  for instance, cows give milk year-round, so there are numerous learning opportunities available with dairy. we can go to our neighbor’s house and milk the cow in the morning, and come back to make fresh mozerella cheese.  for lunch, we join forces with our friend and neighbor, ferit, and make pide (turkish pizza) in a wood oven.  if you prefer, we can make yoghurt, butter, and ayran, a salty traditional yoghurt drink, instead of (or in addition to) cheese.

farm calendar

april/may:  planting time, lemons (lemonade concentrate)

june:  apricots, mulberries, barley, rye or corn harvest and grinding

july:  red grapes for red wine and grape juice concentrate, mulberry concentrate

august:  turkish tomato paste, tarhana soup, drying figs, eggplants and okra

september:  apple cider, white grapes for white wine

october:  olives, pomegranate concentrate

november:  olives

december:  olives, oranges and lemons

january:  orange harvest continues, olive oil packaging, soap making

february:  orange harvest, wine bottling

march:  orange harvest, preparing the soil for planting

year-round: bake bread, make yoghurt, ayran, cheese and natural fruit sodas.