Bezirgan is first and last a farming village, so most efforts go into the land, mainly into growing wheat, barley, fodder vetch, chick peas and sesame.

The soil is good, and very fertile. The old farmers looked well after it, ploughing in manure on a regular basis, and allowing fields to lie fallow as part of a good system of crop rotation. However, the intense advertising efforts of the agrochemicals industry have resulted in a current unhealthy reliance on nitrogen fertilisers, and a forgetting of the old, tried-and-tested and above all successful methods.

Yields are falling. Ploughing with tractors at the wrong times of year and neglecting to manure is causing soil structure to degenerate. The organic movement has a lot of work to do in Turkey if the land is to be handed on to our grandchildren in as good heart as it was left to us.

Kara Mehmet and his wife, Saime, who were farmers, pictured in 1992. Sadly, Kara Mehmet died in 1997 aged 97, and his wife followed him a year later. We won't see his like again.

The farming year starts around February, whenever the ground dries out enough after the winter rains to allow ploughing to begin. Much of the ploughing is still done with horses, which is by far the best option for the good of the soil.

Anybody who has a romantic notion of farming should watch Suleyman dayı bringing his vetch from the fields. This load must weight a hundred kilos.

Fodder vetch (vicia vellosa) is grown for animal feed, and can be used green, as here, or it can be dried and ground as feed for the winter.

Mechanisation comes to Bezirgan! Threshing the crops using a tractor-drawn thresher.

Feğmi Dede is probably the oldest inhabitant of Bezirgan. He has a shop which sells everything imaginable, with an inventory to rival Tesco's. Where else could you buy an umbrella, an oil lamp, salt and wool, all under one roof, and have it delivered?

Once the wheat is threshed and milled, the bread needs to be made.

Neighbours often work together to make the task easier, making enough to last each of their families for perhaps a week.

When they're making bread, people usually take the chance to make "katmer" using the same dough, but filled with cheese, green onions & spinach.

Both sheep's wool and goat hair is carded and spun.

Kadriye teyze is probably the last person in the village with one of these looms still in everyday use.

Here, she is making cloth for covering seats.

People grow peppers in their vegetable patches in sufficient quantity to be able to dry them to make paprika in the autumn. As with many other tasks, groups of neighbours work together.

Both cow's milk and goat's milk is used in these machines to make butter.

Bekci is the expert on all the birds of the mountains, and knows where the eagle sleeps.

With no town water in Bezirgan, either people must draw water from one of the village wells, or sink their own.

Sinking wells is a hard, muddy and expensive business - and of course there's no guarantee that you'll strike water at the end of it.

A village wedding lasts three days, and no wedding is complete without music - On the final day of this wedding, the davulcu (bodhran player) and zurnacı (flute player) head off with the Groom's party to collect the Bride and conduct her to her new home.

Pasha the village barber offers a close shave and a haircut.

Ramazan dayi, another of Bezirgan's farmers.