In the midst of psychological pressure, fear of the future, growing uncertainty, the absence of mental comfort, harsh living conditions, and the ongoing destructive wars that surround us, I sometimes escape back in time to reminisce about our beautiful life despite its harshness, the quiet and simple village life, and I will take you with me back to the beautiful past in a journey that no one could imagine.
I still long for, and love to recall the past and its memories related to the countryside and village life. Despite the hardship and poverty, it was a life of simplicity, happiness, peace, tranquility, and reassurance.
I was born, raised, and grew up in the village of Zuhum in Karak Governorate, where I inherited pride, nobility, bravery, generosity, kindness, forgiveness, and the love of giving, both genetically and from the historical and glorious Karak.
Many people do not know why our village is named Zuhum. The reason for the name goes back to the eternal Battle of Mutah. The area where Muslim armies gathered was known as Zuhum because of its somewhat low-lying terrain surrounded by mountains on all sides, chosen so the Muslim armies would not be exposed to the Romans. The place was crowded with armies and was named Zuhum, which is about 12 kilometers away from the site of the Battle of Mutah.
In the 1950s, most of the villagers were well-off, belonging to the middle class. They lived off sheep herding and farming, owning thousands of dunams in various regions of Karak Governorate. They owned flocks of sheep numbering up to about 5,000 heads, though this number could increase or decrease depending on the season. In good seasons, the number of livestock increased, while in years of drought, the number would decrease as they sold off livestock to feed the remainder.
In this article, I will discuss land farming, which begins with plowing, then sowing, followed by the harvest, transporting the straw to threshing floors, threshing it, winnowing it, and storing the grains and hay.
Because the people of Zuhum owned much land, they divided their farming into two annual seasons. For example, each farmer planted a portion of the land he owned this year, leaving the other half generally unplanted, which is called "gerab," where it is only plowed at the beginning of winter without planting to allow the land to rest and yield a good crop next year. In some cases, it's planted with legumes like lentils and chickpeas, considered a simple crop rotation.
They sowed the land with wheat or barley, concurrently with plowing it. The timing for grain sowing and plowing was usually after the first rains, which came at the end of September. Therefore, sowing and plowing were done in October, and perhaps early November. In the 50s and 60s of the last century, plowing was done using draught animals. If plowing was done using two animals, the plow was called "old haratha", and if done with one animal, it was called "single haratha". I still have one existing in my garden today. Later, plowing shifted to tractors.
My father, may God have mercy on him, was skilled in all farming tasks and was well-known for it among the people. His tools that he used were distinctive, such as: the square or "shaoub", and the straw rake, which has spaced and pointed teeth; the chaff rake, which has close and wide teeth; the sieve, which has relatively large holes allowing only wheat or barley grains to pass; the screen, which has small holes allowing only impurities like dirt and small gravel to pass, not the grains; and the most important tool, "nus al-mid", which is a measure for measuring grains.
In years of prosperity, pulses like lentils and chickpeas were harvested at the end of May, barley in June, and wheat in August.
After the harvest, the crop or (the straw) was transported on draught animals, using a wooden tool called "the qadim", and later it was transported using tractors. It was collected in a method resembling building a wall, called a threshing floor.
Here we reach the types of threshing operations:
1) Up to the 60s, threshing was done using (the qarn), a group of draught animals like mules and donkeys, tied together by a common rope at their heads to align in a single row, driven by a person who would walk with them for hours to trample the straw spread beneath their hooves, shattering the grain and grinding the straw. The product of this stage is called "tiyyab", and it ends the days-long threshing process for each disk, with one threshing floor having (4-5) disks. This was a very exhausting and strenuous process.
2) Afterward, a newer method of threshing appeared, called (the noraj), a machine consisting of sharp iron wheels attached to a tr...
