Seferihisar Municipality celebrated the harvest of the lavender fields on Saturday 9th June in Turgut village with a vibrant festival called Lavender Market.
The lavender seedlings were offered first time to the farmers in 2015 as a value-added alternative product to fruits and vegetables. This year was the third harvest year of the lavenders.
The festival area had been a popular spot all day for the visitors thanks to the producer market including trays for lavender, lavender products, local food and local art associations. There have been various events for lavender oil distillation, soap making and harvest. There have been artists’ performances of folk music, classical music, bands and many more during the festival.
Seferihisar Mayor Tunç Soyer made a speech at the starting ceremony of the festival, where he welcomed the festival visitors from Turgut village, Seferihisar and all the way from Izmir city. He stated: ‘Dear honourable friends, alternative farming is possible in Turkey’. As we were lectured in our childhood, Turkey used to have a self-sufficient agriculture along with six other countries in the world. Turkey used to be the grain source of the world. But what disaster caused us to end up importing green lentils, hay, fertilizer or livestock? There hasn’t been any natural disaster involving these changes, these are all because of wrong policies and political choices. This situation mustn’t be our destiny, this story can be modified and we started to modify it in Seferihisar. We are confident that, as long as the sustainable energy sources like sun, underground water resources and this mild climate exist alternative farming is possible.