Nomad’s life in Madra mountains

 Kadir and his mother migrate to the Gölcük highland at the end of May and are doing transhumance in their wooden huts until the end of November. Capricorns spend the whole summer together with their goats and sheep. While his family migrated from Bursa to Madra Mountain every year until 150 years ago, today this migration has turned into only short-distance migration. Kadir and his family, who are nomads, used to live in black tents, but now they live in small barracks with blue tarps. While grazing their animals in the pastures around the plateau, they provide natural fertilizer to both the forest and their own gardens. Although their shed in the settlement plan is a simple and self-sufficient structure, they grow beans, peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, corn, eggplant, and other summer vegetables in their gardens. Since the plateau served as a road connecting Edremit and Bergama during the Roman period, the ancient knowledge in these lands was transferred from generation to generation and reached the last generation, Kadir.

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 There are ten families who live as a nomad on the plateau. They share their food and help each other to build wooden huts together beginning of summer because during winter bears destroy their huts. They live daily and they sell their vegetables in the public market in Edremit. Kadir’s day start at 4 am every morning with milking their goats after he grazes the goats in the forest until afternoon. He spends time with his mother in their garden until the afternoon. After grazing, goats turn back to their wooden corral by themselves before sunset. They instinctively know the way home.

 

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