ISRAEL 3
I'm still in Israel and finally found my farmer. I did another day-long seminar today and a fellow came up to me to explain he's been reading my stuff for 10 years and a couple of years ago finally bit the bullet, got a piece of land, bought some sheep, and started in.
He couldn't have been more enthusiastic. To say these farmers are dubious about managed grazing would be the understatement of the year. Water. Shade. Dry season and no grass. Boulders in the fields. Difficult terrain. You name it, managed grazing just won't work here.
But this young farmer--probably about 30--strode up to me with a confident demeanor and began telling me his story. He acquired his land and bought about 35 ewes that were in poor shape. He immediately began putting in fencing and moving them in tight paddocks every day. I've mentioned rocks--some softball sized, others basketball, and plenty the size of a wheelbarrow--so thick it looks like somebody was trying to plant the field with rock seeds. Intimidating.
With a laugh, he said he carries a cordless drill with a masonry bit and it only takes about 30 seconds to drill a hole in a rock big enough to accept a 7/16 inch rebar stake with an insulator. He's trained his sheep to respect a single wire--almost an unheard-of feat-- and leaves them out at night. Again, that's generally considered impossible at night due to Palestinians stealing them. But he has a guy who stays with the sheep all night for security.
He thinks he might have found an answer to the security issue with a Speedrite energizer that notifies your cell phone if something breeches (cuts) the perimeter fence. So he's installing a 5-wire perimeter fence around his property that would need to be cut in order for someone to steal sheep. He'd get the notification and be able to go out to check on things.
He said the sheep have become incredibly healthy and the grass is responding remarkably well. It was a day of vindication for me after so much naysaying and pushback. He's going to be the rising star, I think. He even invented a collapsible A-frame shade protection he moves around. He takes a paddy of hay and places it on rocks to concentrate manure and urine and focus disturbance to stimulate new grass germination. He says it's working perfectly as a pasture pump primer. Everything about him was magnetic so we're off to the races.
I also visited a young couple's farm just north of Jerusalem. They're growing probably a half acre of produce in beautifully manicured garden beds on an abandoned army tank parking lot. The vegetable roots are slowly loosening the gravel underneath the shallow topsoil. To think that a tank lot could be repurposed this beautifully is redemption at its highest.
In today's group of seminar attendees, perhaps ten carried semi-automatic rifles. I'm in Judea and Samaria where many Israelis carry weapons for protection. Like Prime Minister Golda Meir said half a century ago: "If the Arabs would put down their weapons we'd have peace tomorrow; if Israel put down its weapons there would be no Israel tomorrow." Truer words were never spoken.
Oh, one other great thing I learned in the last day: Israel has pigs. Up to 250,000 of them. It's illegal to import pork and also illegal to let a pig touch the dirt. But pigs are raised here primarily for the nearly 1 million Russian Jews who emigrated after the Nuremburg trials. This discovery has given me far more emotional freedom to explain the benefits of pigaerator composting to replace fuel, machinery, and labor. With no trees to speak of, I thought wood chips would be expensive, but they aren't too bad: about 50 percent higher than the going rate in Virginia. That's doable for a carbonaceous diaper. The ability to duplicate ecological livestock farming principles are increasing daily and I can get more comfortable telling my story. It's a great time to be in Israel.
