December is Dedicated to the Dump Truck

December is dedicated to the dump truck. 

With land excavations mostly done, it was time for the filling to come. The large bulldozer left and the dump trucks arrived, leaving pile upon pile of compost and mulch.  

Meanwhile, a small bulldozer ferried pile upon pile of mulch and soil across the property. For most of the month here in Israel, days were we hot and summery with sapphire-blue skies. Great gardening weather. 

I had no idea how many loads of mulch and soil were involved. Turns out, it was many. There seemed to be a highway of trucks rolling up my neighbor’s driveway in order to access the back of the property. The first time a truck arrived, I called her to ask permission. “Sure,” she replied. “You don’t need to call. Go ahead.”

The truck rumbled in, dumped and left. Then another came. And another. The community yard waste that had piled up over the year also arrived in trucks. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure as the saying goes. It was mulched on site, then we paid for seven huge trucks to dump it on our land. 

Again, trucks went up and down our neighbor’s driveway. We then raked and we raked the mulch across the property until I had blisters on my hands. The land was soon covered with a warm blanket. Green manure taken to the extreme.

Trucks of manure came and went. This went on day after day until mountains of manure filled the back. They were steaming, baking hot inside like an oven. This was a sign that lots of bacterial activity was still going on.

Aside from the mulch mountain, there were two kinds of compost dumped here: a green one and a brown one. The green one was made of clippings and manure and is high in nitrogen, while the brown was mostly decomposed twigs, leaves and wood chips. This pile is carbon rich as opposed to nitrogen rich. The relationship between these two piles was very important as we were soon to learn.

The piles were steaming away, waiting for the no-dig team to arrive on the scene. It was time to build the market garden beds. The permaculture superheroes also arrived. 

Aside from team leader permaculturist Yuval, we had permaculture Ido, who loved cacti and succulents. Shai No-Dig came, popular host of the Israeli No Dig Facebook group. He spoke passionately about soil all day, every day. 

Yigal came, a permaculture farmer who owns a huge parcel of land in Portugal.  And there was “Kiko,” a young guy who ran his own organic vegetable business, as well as Arnon, the gardener-irrigation guy. There was Nachum, a Californian who found Hashem and who loves nature. We even had a young woman, Efrat, work for a few days. Her full-time gig was a carpenter and she was strong!

Then there was us, the older, less informed, farmer wanna be’s. We asked to be put to work. Before I knew it, I was pounding hardened clumps of earth and removing rocks from the beds while Shai and Yuval took out measuring tapes, stakes and ropes. I bashed and I hauled and I sweated. 

Once the beds were outlined with string, we took shovels and filled wheelbarrows with the green manure, then gently dumped them across the beds. Next came careful raking to ensure the soil was straight; higher in the middle and slightly lower on the sides; fluffy but not too much air. 

There was to be minimum disturbance of the soil and there was a lot of discussion about this. They brought a door and then a pipe to gently tamp the beds. Then came the brown compost stage, same treatment. 

The attention and precision taken reminded of Tibetan monks forming a sand mandala. It would have been meditative if my back muscles were not screaming. And if I had trampled on it like the monks destroyed their mandalas to show life’s impermanence, I would have been deigned an impermanent no-dig gardener and escorted off-site.

The dogs, however, broke the golden rule by stepping on the perfect beds, then laying right in the center of them.  They tried out each perfected bed like Goldilocks, leaving paw marks behind them.

Our last job was to mulch in between the beds. Our friends Doug and Paula came from Ra’anana for a full day of digging, wheelbarrowing, and raking. Doug covered the land with a mixture of wheat and nitrogen-fixing clover seeds, a way of further enriching the soil. 

This will soon (as long as we get enough rain) become a cover crop and will take nitrogen from the air, then fix it into its roots. Come spring, we will ‘chop and drop’ it back onto the mulch so when it decomposes, it will add the beneficial nutrients to the soil.

Another responsibility was making the crew lunch. We were sometimes 10 people for lunch and I wanted to serve something healthy and energizing to this hungry strong crew. Day after day, we set the table in the garden and sat around it in the afternoon sun, eating a variety salads and hearty vegetable soups. No Dig Shai blessed us that next year we will be eating vegetables straight from our no-dig beds. 

It felt like a scene from some movie set in Tuscany. Then it was back to work. The irrigation lines were then laid and the rain finally arrived. 

With rain here, I am outside with muddy boots watching that mulch like a hawk for any sign of life. 

The food forest tree holes are dug, mulched, and resting, waiting for company. The beds are ready. They are empty and lonely and eager for life. As soon as the fence goes in, we will plant some winter veggies: possibly spinach, kale, lettuce, radishes, and beets.

Meanwhile, our porcupine may soon be locked into paradise if we can’t dislodge him before the fence is installed. We block up holes with huge boulders and then he extracts them at night, waking me up with his engineering feats.  It sounds like a burglar is downstairs, however burglars are too sly and silent to be so easily detected. I soon realize it is the destructive, fanatical porcupine.

With December coming to a close, the last dump truck has finally left. Silence reigns save for the patter of rain. The much-needed precipitation and accompanying fog work magic, dripping life into the soil, massaging it, prepping it for the warm spring sun and plants soon to come.

Our construction site

It has been an active month in the food forest-to-be. Yuval, our food forest expert, calls this the infrastructure phase. I call this a mess. This work looks more like highway construction than forest development. 

A large bulldozer was joined by a small bulldozer and together, they gathered large rocks onsite to create terraces for the market garden. It is still all about rocks and now we are actually happy about this rocky win fall on our land as they are just piled up everywhere ready for the taking, both above and underground. 

The bulldozers also piled up boulders to create a lookout at the back. From up there, I can see parts of the Kinneret, much of the Golan, including the volcanoes that were responsible for tossing the boulders this way, and, shockingly, Mount Hermon. One day, I hope to see the tops of many fruit trees that will form the future food forest.

Trucks have been dumping soil for the market garden and gravel for the road and pathway. With the beeping of the tractors and the crashing of gravel and the dust clouds from the trucks, it feels like a construction site and not a garden. 

Yes, it still requires imagination and the place actually looks more like a parking lot than when we first started, so this is not saying much. Yet the tractors did start to dig holes for future trees. They dug them, filled them with earth, and then Yuval placed a stone with red spray paint to mark the spot. (Due to a late start, Yuval prefers to do all of the planting in the spring, so we will have to imagine these red marks as trees until then.)

The bulldozers also dug a long trench for the electrical and main irrigation lines. While digging, they removed some pretty hefty rocks. We hope to place these boulders in the forest as a reminder of what is hiding underground - or perhaps they can serve as reclining chairs should a giant drop by.

And yes, the bulldozers also hit boulders so huge, they broke a few teeth on their shovels, And so they had to use a drill attachment to break them in pieces. The incessant hammering sound of this was enough to make one insane, and I know one of my neighbors is suffering from the pummeling. There was no escape until those boulders were diminished to rubble and I could once again hear the sweet sound of cranes migrating overhead.

 

In the front, we are done with creating the beds and are starting to lay the irrigation lines. We placed bamboo fencing around the perimeter, closing it off from the road. The space now has a cozy, enclosed feeling, much like a room. I planted garlic bulbs, threw around some wild poppy seeds, replanted some nasturtiums that I found sprouting on the roadside, and planted a black-eyed Susan and a morning glory that I hope will grow up the fence. 

I am still holding off on planting leafy greens in the front as we are not sure if the porcupine has left the premises, and yes, he loves greens. To add to the list of predators that love greens, there are wild boars here. We had a positive sighting when our dog Sushi found a boar on his walk and chased him down the road. So yes, boars are also a threat to an edible garden. We will have to get on fence duty soon.

Once the irrigation lines are finished out front, I can count the spaces on the pipes and will then know how many herbs I can buy. (I do not think those predators will be interested in herbs, but will soon find out.) I already have my wish list and am excited to plant, but so far, weeds have found my cozy, clean, and rich beds and are proliferating. So much for the cardboard. Are these weeds a product of the goat manure, or did they simply fly in and make a perfect landing in this cushiony soil? 

We also placed two passion fruit vines below the front patio wall and hope they will wend their way up and maybe, if they are bold and adventurous, they will discover the pergola. I love the idea of having passionfruit falling from the wooden beams above.

The rain finally arrived, transforming the rock-hard soil into soft, dark, and claylike earth. It is actually beautiful soil, considering we were feeling a bit hopeless about its quality given that the place was turned into a parking lot 22 years ago.

Watching how the rain falls gives us an opportunity to put our permaculture knowledge about water to use; we are to slow, spread, and sink those raindrops as they fall from the heavens in abundance. 

On Friday, out we ran out in the pouring rain to see exactly where mini ponds and rivulets formed, deciding how we can reroute it to nourish the large trees. It is so basic and beautiful to observe the power of nature this way and then use practical solutions like trenches or rocks to redirect the nurturing flow, preventing water from flooding and destroying.

A truck just delivered a load of hoses for the irrigation system and laying the lines will be next week’s work. A few truckloads of mulch also arrived, filling the place with a sweet forest fragrance. 

Once those bulldozers are done bulldozing and the trucks finish their dumping, silence will return. I so look forward to working this land in quiet simplicity with my own bare hands. 

Our journey begins!

For those who love gardening, this shmita year seemed interminable. With Rosh Hashana now over, we can finally plant again in Israel! Not being able to do something I love for a year has fortified my patience. It forced me to sit back, research, and dream. 

Now, finally being outside and working on fulfilling those plans is more rewarding than ever. We have a completed food forest plan. We know the location of each tree, vine, and ground cover, with the swales and irrigation lines also on the map. 

We look at the plan and then peer outside at the rocks. I do believe in this project, yet I also know how many boulders are sleeping beneath this ground. I trust in transformation and look forward to seeing this rocky, gravelly surface turn into soft, fertile soil.

Aside from having plentiful rocks, the land we bought came with a few olive trees. Fat, black, purplish olives are now dripping off some trees, while others have smallish green olives daintily hanging from branches. I am sure there are several varieties here, but for this uninformed farmer, they are just olives.

We did our first harvest, filling buckets with the fat, black olives, then salting them. Not sure if we have enough green olives to make our own olive oil, but will wait a few weeks and see. If I get a small hand rake and a mat for the fallen ones, I may even look like I know what I am doing.

Aside from plentiful rocks and olive trees, the land we bought came with a porcupine who is presently the downstairs tenant. We have never seen him, but he leaves calling cards consisting of  quills, is boisterous at night, and chews on electrical wires for fun. I found out how much he appreciates greens when I left my sweet potato plants out overnight. By morning, they were bare stalks.

As the porcupine is so voracious and sneaky, I cannot plant any vegetables until we have a secure fence. I hope that will happen soon, as the winter planting season was September and we are missing this boat.

Yet lots is happening. On Sunday, a JCB bulldozer will be starting the extensive land works on the food forest. Due to the condition of this challenging plot, it could take up to 15 days of moving rocks and preparing the land for planting. 

I expect the land will birth some mighty rocks this week, which I will then use for a cactus rock garden.

We are using our limited permaculture knowledge to create a no-till garden in the front. The idea is to lay cardboard on the ground to stifle the weeds and then layer compost and soil on top of this before planting. 

I felt so proud to upcycle all the cardboard boxes we used when we moved and I carefully removed the tape and staples, then lay them across the front. Of course, a gust of wind sent the cardboard swirling, so I laid rocks on top of the cardboard. 

As I was surveying my hard work, our next-door neighbor, who is a real farmer, sauntered over. He saw what I saw – a jigsaw like pattern of cardboard and rocks, then looked at me in shock. 

“What are you doing?” he asked, stupefied.

“Permaculture,” I answered, hoping that this big word would suffice. “Beautiful, right?”

He laughed and quickly trotted off, leaving me alone with my mess.

Along with the super attractive boxes, the front started to fill up with buckets of goat manure. (I am so glad my neighbor was not around to see this.) 

We got a hot tip that piles of free goat manure were spotted near Mount Meiron. Amir was on it right away. He took a shovel, hitched the trailer to the car, borrowed some buckets, and filled them up till they were brimming with goats’ you know what.

On Tuesday, when a truckload of soil arrived for the front cardboard garden, we scattered some goat manure, sprinkled some compost, and then topped it off with dark, fluffy soil straight from the Golan.

Rock after rock lined the new beds. (Those are free too and we will be happy to give some rocks away!) Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow soon engulfed the cardboard, creating real garden beds. And then the rain arrived just in time to start decomposing the underlayer of cardboard. 

All we need are inhabitants for our new beds, envisioning fragrant herbs and culinary herbs, herbs for tea, and then, even more herbs.

It has been a wonderful time of creativity, hard sweat, gratitude, and appreciation to be finally outside working the land. We look forward to a fragrant porcupine-free front yard, and soon, a wild transformation out back.

They Paved Paradise

The quadruplets

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” As I walk across the land we recently bought, Joni Mitchell’s lyrics echo in my mind. This land is empty, save for jutting rocks and boulders. The gravelly, dry, and dusty ground crunches below my feet. 

A few hardy weeds grow in clumps, clinging on for life under a scorching sun. At the back of the property is a dead tree; skeletal, scorched, and black, it is a remnant of a fire that ravaged this parcel of land a few years ago.

And now, this infertile land is ours to breathe life into by using natural ways to transform it into a food forest. The major building block and key component of a food forest is healthy, fertile soil, and our first obstacle ahead is this gravel. 

I first thought the gravel was superficial like a thin glaze on a cake, and would give way to fecundity below. Our food forest expert ordered a soil test, hiring a tractor to dig down and extract a sample to send to a lab.

One morning, a small tractor arrived, its digger poised for the mini excavation. Exhausted by our recent move and our ongoing house renovation, I was excited to be outside kicking around the earth and dreaming of the planting phase of our new life.

We stood around the digger as the driver raised the bucket and lowered it to the ground. Clunk. The machine reared back on its back wheels, looking as if it would do a digger somersault. The driver made another attempt. Bang. 

He moved the digger and started to scrape a second area. Crunch. The digger rose up in protest, the driver scratched his head, and the food forest expert directed him to yet another part of the land. 

When we bought this land and I asked about the gravel, the former owner mentioned that he had rented out this land for parking during the Pope’s Israel trip. That was back in March, 2000 when John Paul II delivered a homily near Korazim. 

And here we are, standing on a gravelly plot some 22 years later. An unassuming tractor is trying to dig a hole for a purist permaculturalist so that us uninitiated land owners can grow trees organically. But what happens when there is no soil so to speak?

The digger finally found a spot that gave way and we stood beside the hole with bated breath. Gravel, small rocks, and more gravel came out. “Deeper,” the permaculturalist instructed.

The little digger groaned and fell back, then dug a bit deeper. More rocks. White, chalky, limestone. We peered inside. Deeper, he tried, but this little digger could not dig. It was just too little. 

We set aside a date the following week and a bigger digger arrived. The permaculturalist indicated a spot and the claws went into the earth. Scratchhhh went the digger, nails scraping  blackboard. 

He tried a different angle. Scraaape. We peered into the hole as he unearthed a giant boulder. The arm heaved as he pulled it forth, birthing it from a millennia-long slumber. 

“Gorgeous,” I marvelled, shocked that I would use this term to describe a rock. These were not regular rocks, but basalt beauties that were spewed from volcanoes in the Golan some 100,000 to 700,000 years ago. 

When I heard the scratching sound again, I realized that it had a twin. No, it was one of quadruplets. I touched the newborn giants, still warm from their long gestation in the ground. And then it dawned on me that I may be in the rock-collecting business and not a permaculture farmer after all. 

Down the tractor claw went, finally extracting a chunk of dark earth in its metal palm. The permaculturalist jumped into the hole to examine the earth. I took a clump in my hand and smelled it. Pressed it. Clayish. 

Similar to an archeological excavation where civilizations are delineated by natural lines underground, there was a division between the gravelly white stuff and the dark stuff about a foot below the surface. 

This caused the puzzled permaculturalist to call the former owner. He learned that 22 years ago, in preparation for the Pope’s visit, a tractor carted off the huge boulders sitting atop the land. As for the rocks partially jutting out of the soil, they were extracted like cavities and the holes then filled in with gravel, rocks, and assorted garbage to put up a parking lot.

So here we stand atop our thick pile of gravel, close to Capernaum, the place of the famous Beatitudes’ teachings and even closer to ancient Chorazim, which was cursed in the Book of Matthew. At the start of the millennium, John Paul II visited and delivered this homily. 

We have not received the results from the soil lab and the project is already taking interesting turns. I am learning the history of this area, and about the Evangelical Triangle. In the times of the Tanach, Korazim was the wheat capital. 

Although I see no wheat, the rich basalt soil endows thriving mango, lychee, sabra, grape, and fig. 

We have a rocky road ahead of us, literally, but are up for a challenge with lots more tractor time scheduled for the near future. In the meantime, I will appreciate each and every basalt and limestone rock that is unearthed and birthed.  

A Farmer in the Dell

A food forest in Israel.

With a June birthday, I have officially entered into a new decade.  This decade felt more ominous when it was looming ahead; but now that I have arrived, waking up feeling exactly the same as in the previous decade, it is not so bad. 

I have arrived, determined not to ‘go there’ about ageing, having regrets of life flying too fast, or dwelling on aches and pains.

I feel fortunate to be alive and am grateful to have energy and enthusiasm. In fact, I am about to start a brand-new project as I will soon become a ‘farmer,’ of sorts. I am not sure what got into me to do such a flip. Was it the pandemic? The doom and gloom over impending food shortages? My fickle, ever-changing Gemini nature? A thirst for the spiritual? Or maybe it was a combination of everything above. 

Our barren land and next door, our neighbor's abundance.

The bottom line is that I am shifting focus and throwing myself to the dirt. Literally. Amir and I bought an empty, dusty, dry, and rocky piece of land that we dream of transforming into a food forest. 

I know how to grow a few things badly; last winter (pre-shmita), we enjoyed growing and eating spinach, lettuce and kale, but come summer, my wind-tossed tomatoes fell over into a hopeless, tangled mess. I did not pick my cucumbers on time, but I did enjoy a few sweet peas (three to be exact), kohlrabi, and radishes.

My strawberries had a party sprawling across the garden bed and mingling with the spinach, but did not produce a single fruit (unless the birds got to them before I did). I had a strangely shaped eggplant that I do not remember planting, hot peppers that were on fire, and super bug-infested broccoli.

Yet I want to continue learning even if it is trial by error. I want to embrace a clean and healthy way of life by growing and harvesting my own organic, pesticide-free food. I want to be more self-sufficient as I strongly believe the world is very unstable now. 

I also feel that being outside in the sunshine tending to plants nourishes my soul and body. I crave that connection. Yet I have far to go to achieve this. It is like standing at the base of a mountain and seeing the summit far, far above. 

We will have to wade and climb through new permaculture knowledge: understanding patterns of sun, wind, and rain; amending soil, planting nitrogen fixers, selecting heirloom seeds, attracting pollinators, interplanting, companion planting, succession planting, over cropping and under cropping. We will experiment with soil recipes to be able to grow abundant food, take on worm composting, and learn how to plan winter, summer crops, and take care of the food forest.

Produce from our small raised bed pre-shmita garden.

And then there’s chickens. We need to build a secure chicken coop, as well as learn how to feed and care for chickens who will hopefully provide eggs and manure for precious compost. Then there’s getting electricity from solar panels and somehow storing water. I may sound like a homesteader wannabe, but at this early stage, that word is way too ‘off-the-grid’ for me.

Each garden has potential
to be a Gan Eden.

This project is now in the planning stages as here in Israel, we are still in a shmita year. This happens every seven years here and is a time for the land to rest. But come Rosh Hashana, the year is renewed, becoming planting time once again. 

This is also a renewal for me as I enter this new decade of not slowing down. This vision rejuvenates me, making me feel like an excited kid all over again. After shmita, we will take this farm project step-by-step, first trying to revive the soil, planting, and then hopefully transforming this dusty plot into a place teeming with life. 

For me, entering this new phase is also a way to leave behind the negative forces that are happening on the outside and refocus on life, growth, hopefully co-creating towards a healthy, healing, and sustainable future.

It is meaningful for me to be part of repairing the world, even if this starts on one small, dusty plot. For every small change starts at home.

Unmoving Rocks

If one were to name the most common feature of Israel’s topography, 'rocks' would most certainly tumble to the top of the list. The rugged and stark Negev, Judean, and Arava Deserts are pure rock, sculpted over millennia into steep cliffs, gorges and dry, sandy wadis. Be it amber, brown, or white, the dominant feature is rock. 

Travel north and you will see chalky cliffs along the Mediterranean seashore. More rock!  The Galilee is also stony, with mountains and valleys creating a series of rocky waves. The Golan is so rocky, fields are flecked with what looks like speckled melons, yet on closer inspection, they are a bumper crop of rocks.

Israel’s plentiful rocks are like snow to the Inuit or lakes to the beaver, yet I was in for a shock to learn that you cannot move or take rocks in Israel. You need a permit for this, and you need to pay! This is yet another example of 'don't ask why, this is Israel.'

Perhaps some government official created this rule to add to the already senseless and  inefficient bureaucracy here. (I think of the Israeli post office; one can literally walk to the letter’s destination, arriving there before the stamped package does.)

Case in point. I am soon moving to a place that is endeared with more rocks than the usual rocky Israeli terrain. I want to build a rock garden for privacy, so I thought a few boulders would nicely do the job. 

There is a subdivision being built at the end of the property and bulldozers amass mountains of rocks daily to clear the area. If we could take some of those rocks for our garden, the builders would be relieved – and perhaps they would even be kind enough to move a few of them with those bulldozers on site.

No, no, no. And do not ask why we cannot even have one stone, as nothing makes logical sense in this holy land of rocks. You see, there is a law in Israel forbidding one from moving rocks away from the place where they were dug up. In order to do so, a builder needs to apply for a permit, and only then can he sell them. 

Or, the builder can grind the huge boulders up on the spot where they were extracted, spitting them out as gravel and transforming ancient volcanic boulders into dusty, dry gravel. More sand in a dry, parched land.

I no longer scratch my head or pull out my hair. I have been living here for too long to question the illogical, so I simply watch in disbelief as the bulldozers transport their load to an onsite quarry, which then spews out gravel, sand, and dust. 

I could wonder if the builder would be kind enough to give me some of the dirt, but I know the answer before I even pose the question. Nothing here is for free, not even a measly rock or a pile of dirt. Is there a similar seashell bylaw?

The crazy thing is that rocks are not even considered a valuable natural resource here. They are, well, rocks. Israel is valued for its potash, copper, natural gas, ore, magnesium bromide, and phosphate. So what’s the big deal about a pile of rocks? 

Maybe some bureaucrat from the 'Ministry of Rocks and Boulders' was bored, so he came up with this law, or perhaps an official wanted to play a practical joke on the population. We may never know. 

Like many objects and places in Israel, rocks do have a powerful energy. G-d is compared to a rock and the patriarch Yaacov used a rock as a pillow when he dreamed of angels on a ladder. 

Moses was told by G-d that water would pour forth from a rock and when it did not, he hit it a second time and was punished. And the Cohen HaGadol had a breastplate of twelve gemstones that acted as mediator between G-d and the people.

The shiny and smooth boulders of Jerusalem’s Western Wall are softened by tears, prayer, and loving caresses, while above it looms the Dome of the Rock.  

There are healing rocks here, such as the blue-green Eilat stone, also called the Israel stone, while the salty hot Dead Sea rocks resemble icicles.

Yes, this is a land of revelation and bewilderment where rocks have sovereignty. Ancient, hard and sun-baked, rocks continue to reign supreme, stoically standing in piles far from from my garden.