My friends, My friends

The last few weeks in Israel has been so much fun. I visited all my friends I worked with last year on Chava V'Adam, an educational farm in the center of Israel. That whole year was truly a time of growth and learning for me. As well as a heck of a good time. Let's face it, you put a bunch of 18 to 25 year olds in a outdoorsy communal environment, they're gonna have a good time. We danced the nights away, outdoors on the stage/water tank, and indoors in the salon area, even the kitchen. While one person would be cooking dinner in this tiny room, four or five girls would be breaking down to the sounds of Balkan Beat Box and other cool Israeli music. Most of the Israelis were 18, right between high school and army. So there was lots of energy.

Anyway, fast forward to last week. I spent the first nights of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot at the farm. Most of my friends from last year are no longer there. Some are in the army, other's are doing things in elsewhere. But there's a new group of people there, particularly, a new group of Americans doing the farm's Eco Israel program . I helped out with the first session of the program last year, and boy have they come along way. These American kids split there time between learning and practicing permaculture, learning about israel, judaism, and hebrew. All in a beautiful organic setting. The current group is really great, and I especially enjoyed jamming with Eliot(guitar) and Anna(violin).

I took some time to visit farm friends in Haifa, who had were selling their wares at the Haifa Film Festival. Gali makes clay art and jewelry from clay and pigments that she harvests herself. Neta makes felted wool bags and jewelry from wool that people were throwing away. Felted wool is so cool!!!

I also visited my friend Hadas, who is now working at a Medicinal Herb farm in the middle of nowhere near beer sheva in the desert. I was really wary about going to the desert, seeing as how I don't really like the climate. I lived in Israel's Negev desert for half a year and it's not really my cup of tea. Anyway, I had a blast. The farm is really cool. There's a very small medicinal herb plot, which they supplement wth wild harvests of local herbs to make all sorts of tinctures,creams, etc, in their lab. The owners live in a beautiful cob house surrounded by all sorts of fruit trees, olives planted everywhere, a dome covered in grapes. They have 80 goats as well. The owners were having a Succot festival for their friends, so there was little work to do, asides from playing music around the bonfire, eating good food, playing with babies, and relaxing in the strawbale sauna. That was particularly enjoyable. I also had the oppurtunity to ride a one eyed horse. Don't worry, I was gentle.

After the southern desert, it was off to the North on a road trip with my friend Naomi. We spent a night on the shore of the Sea of Galillee, swam naked under the stars in Israel's main source of water and the worlds lowest fresh water lake. In the morning I got to ride on an innertube pulled by a motorboat belonging to some new friends I made the night before on the beach. What fun! Then it was off to Tzfat(or Safed as some people call it), the Northern Israeli city where many of the great Kabbalists lived and studied. I myself studied for a year in a religous seminary in tzfat back in 2002, so it was nice to visit my old haunting grounds. We stayed in a thousand year old Mamluk period donkey stables, what's called in hebrew a Khan, kind of like a inn/manger, nestled in the heart of the old city. Friends in Tzfat are improving the Khan and turning it into a Center for Holistic Medicine, like natural births and other therapies, along with a community center for events and workshops. It is being restored using natural building techniques including lime plaster and cob, and will also include an indoor greyewater system, sort of artificial wetlands.

Besides visiting friends I also made some movements toward inquiring about land availability in Israel, particularly the Upper Galillee near Tzfat. That's where the most rains are ,30 inches or so, aside from the Mt. Hermon region in the Golan Heights. Land is not cheap in Israel, even agricultural land, which cannot be used for commercial or residential construction. But in the peripheries of Israel, the North and South away from the densely populated center, land is cheaper. Renting agricultural land in a good option for me to start with and one I probably will do. Then there's growing on land for free. A friend of mine told me about a friend of his who posted signs in agricultural communities asking if anybody had unused land he could grow food on. Bingo! Free use of land. I've seen this before in California. A woman I wwoofed for had a market garden but needed more growing space and a neighbor let her use her front yard. For free! So that could be an option too.

I'm back in New Jersey now, headed to Ashland, Oregon on monday. I've got a bunch of people I'm looking to rent a room from, along with space on the property for a garden. I've got all these projects I want to start working on. i want to start designing and building the garden ASAP, including raised beds,cold frames, greenhouse, self watering containers, collect plenty of organic matter for making compost, want to make a worm composting bin, and get some mushroom kits started. And that's just the beginning! Besides that I have to find some payed work, take some more guitar lessons, and be a busy permaculturist in the garden and home. How exciting!!!