Most certainly you have heard of farm to table restaurants. Who doesn’t love to eat fresh, locally produced food? Typically, however, you pay more in the US for such a luxury, but in Turkey this is the standard for local restaurants without the additional cost. On the other hand, have you ever heard of “field to floor?” Probably not because I made it up. Let me tell you about the luxury of having rugs on your floors whose fabric once roamed the open fields.

Along remote roads in southeast Turkey we drove from the Monastery of Saint Gabriel, the oldest surviving Syriac monastery dating back to the 5th century, to a pizzeria recently opened in a Syriac village that is being renovated in Midyat, Mardin.

Around each corner we saw flocks of sheep and goats scattered across the fields as they followed their shepherds over the hills and through the valleys. Alongside the road we also saw settlements made of tents surrounded by lambs, baby goats, and women hard at work.

These are semi-nomadic Kurdish shepherds, known to reside in mountain villages during the summer and in the lowland pastures during the winter months. Would you believe that we had the privilege of drinking tea with them!?

Upon stopping we were warmly greeted by a sheep we named Charlie and kindly invited in for tea by a mother and daughter. Although our conversation was limited by language, they were hospitable and shared with us their traditional way of life. These people continue to raise sheep and goats as their ancestors did with the men spending their days out in the fields with the flocks and the women raising the young animals, washing, cooking, and tending to the settlement. Together they sheer the sheep, removing the sheep’s thick fleece which can then be made into yarn.

Earlier in our travels we passed through the city center of Midyat where we met Mustafa, a soft-spoken Arab amca (ahm-jah). This is a term of endearment for elderly men which literally means “uncle”. He sat down at a loom to weave yarn made from local sheep and goats into a magnificent rug, just as his fathers before him had done. The type of rugs that Mustafa makes are known as kilim (key-leam). They are distinguished by a flat-weaving technique that is traditional to Turkey. Expertly he showed us how Charlie the Sheep’s fleece can be transformed to yarn, weaved on a loom into a kilim, then brushed out on one side to become a masterpiece worthy of any floor (and as soft as can be).