My 3-Year Olive Oil Quest – In Mishpacha Magazine

In this week’s Chanukah Edition of Mishpacha Magazine you will find a feature I wrote about our 3-year quest to produce our own olive oil from the beautiful olive trees that surround us here in the Land of Israel. Expect vivid descriptions of gorgeous landscape, wrangles with taciturn farmers and tenacity in the face of repeated failure, […]

Picking and Pressing Olive Oil in Israel

Note: This article is from 2021. One of my favorite times of year Olive harvest season! This is my third year participating in this most scenic and satisfying of pursuits. I think I am perfecting my whackity-whack technique! I’ve definitely upped my game since last year. We picked 96kg over 2 days. Then we hauled […]

VIDEO: Watch Our Latest Harvests

If you’ve always dreamed of harvesting your own food, it’s not as impossible as you might think! The past two months have been blessed with lots of picking, processing and feasting here on our tiny urban farm in the midst of the sprawling Israeli city of Beit Shemesh. This 1-min video gives you a quick […]

How to Brew Your Own Apple Vinegar

Making your own apple vinegar is a very satisfying city farming project because: It makes magical use of waste scraps of fruit – rather than throwing them away It produces a useful, expensive-to-buy product that is great for food flavoring, home remedies and for cleaning (See my recipe for homemade citrus-infused all-purpose cleanser) Since this […]

Pure and Scrumptious Homemade Apple Sauce

Don’t you love it when a SINGLE natural ingredient can be transformed into the most delicious spoonful? Homemade apple sauce is like that. So simple, so pure, just the delight of freshly harvested apples attaining their delicious perfection. It’s one of my ultimate winter comfort foods. *Step 1 Peel and core apples. As many as […]

How to Grow a Loofah Sponge in Israel

Today was a big day nine months in the making. Today we picked and processed the loofah sponges that we planted back in April. Anyone who wants seeds to plant their own loofahs next summer should be in touch. I want to turn Ramat Beit Shemesh into the Loofah Capital of the World! (Yes, I […]

Wild Edible Mushrooms – To Eat or not to Eat?

A lot of these cute mushrooms have been popping up in our peanut bed. With the help of an Israeli Mushroom group, we identified them as White Dapperlings, which are edible. Did we eat them? NO WAY!!! We don’t mess around with mushrooms. But it is a topic I would love to become more knowledgeable […]

Adventures in Olive Picking and Pressing

Recently, here in Israel we were blessed with the first rains of the winter. You know what that means, right? It’s Olive Picking Season! Over the past two weeks, I spent five mornings picking olives and pressing olive oil in a picturesque ancient olive grove on a hillside right outside my hometown of Beit Shemesh. […]