I Made Wine in a Week. You Can Too!
Making wine at home in Israel is easy and rewarding – especially this year. A super simple guide to making wine in a week for first-timers.
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 […]
How to Attract Ladybugs to Your Yard in Israel
Every gardener wishes that they had ladybugs in their yard! Besides being iconic and adorable, ladybugs are voracious munchers of those pesky aphids. But how can we get these cute and hungry guests into our gardens? It’s not that easy, especially in the city. But BH we finally succeeded in creating a thriving ladybug colony […]
A Tale of 2 Cute Chicks and a Cute Little Farm
Today I went for a meeting at the Educational Farm to make sure that everything is ready to go for our launch event on Wednesday morning. If you remember, this is how our land looked before Pesach This is how our cute little farm looks today – all ready for us to build our raised beds […]
Why Now is the Time to Plant a Tree in Israel (Nothing to do with Tu Bishvat)
There is an old Chinese proverb that asks: When is the best time to plant a tree? We’ll get to the old Chinese answer soon, but first let’s look at the answer that most Jews would give. When is the best time to plant a tree? Tu Bishvat, of course! AKA the Jewish New Year […]
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 Pick Nettle and Make Gourmet Nettle Soup
This nettle soup has SUCH a rich interesting flavor and inexplicably creamy texture, despite having so few ingredients and no flavorings. If you’re stuck at home and restless during lockdown, making nettle soup might be just the adventure you need. Wild Nettle Soup Recipe Step 1 – Find Nettles and Pick Stinging Nettles grow wild […]
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 […]
Making and Lighting Olive Oil with Kids
In honor of Chanukah, I just ran a hands-on olive picking and pressing workshop for the family’s of the Community Garden of Arnona, a neighborhood in southern Jerusalem. The first step was to pick the olives off the branches that I brought in. Then we had to crush the olives. Then we pressed the crushed […]