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.