Happy Thanksgiving!!
For the record, only Americans think pumpkin pie is an edible food product – in the past week, I’ve seen numerous Israelis (and Britons and Scotts) turn thier noses up at our beloved desert; no one can really comprehend the idea of putting a pumpkin into a pieshell. But the turkey and stuffing and giving thanks and all that is a big hit. We had a really wonderful cozy Eco-Israel Thanksgiving at the Farm on Tuesday (where we got to explain all our traditions to our resident Australian, Sophie) and express our thanks for things like the beautiful sunsests here, the hospitality of strangers, the chance to be living on a sustainble farm (with donkeys!), being with each other, gratitude for our families, and on and on. On Thursday, Michal and I took off right after Zionism class for a second Thanksgiving dinner in Jerusalem at Ada and John’s house – unforch, J-town traffic was so bad we missed all the thanks part, but we got to stuff ourselves silly on stuffing, sweet potatoes, and all those other tradional foods like grape leaves, tahina, pickles, pomegranate juice, and cake. Yum!
Life at the far is pretty much the same – whenever I see friends here they always ask “what’s up at the farm?” but nothing much ever changes. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but it’s a farm, so we do a lot of weeding and and watering, fixing our ailing compost systems, and natural building stuff like re-plastering the main building with a combination of sand, clay, straw and water. This week we had a demostration lesson on plowing with donkeys, but stubborn old Batia REFUSED to move forward, preferring to step backwards over the plow for long enough that we gave up and did the field by hand. Summer and I build a new set of shelves for our kitchen, that hopfully will give us more workspace and storage in our tiny kitchen. The eggplants are STILL growing, which means that we’re STILL eating eggplant every day except when the cook declares it an eggplant-free day, because we’re all so tired of it. But finally we’re getting some new crops in, like kale and collards, greens, beets, and tons of citrus.
Shoot – I’m out of internet time. I think our broken computer and slow internet connection at the farm got fixed this weekend, so hopefully I can update mjore soon. Hope you’re all well!
