A weekend at the kibbutz

Kibbutz agriculture then

During our visit of my brother and his family in Israel we visited the kibbutz Degania Bet at the Sea of Galilee. Degania Bet was founded in the Twenties and is right next to the very first kibbutz, Degania Aleph. I was curious about kibbutz life. I met several people who spent a year volunteering in a kibbutz after school and I see parallels with to the Camphill movement (I have spent several years in a Camphill community). Both movements have a more collective, almost mythological past. Over the decades changes were made to accomodate for a stronger private sphere and a more individual lifestyle. Today they have changed so much, that both movements seem to be in a profound crisis. On the facebook page of former Degania B volunteers they share the same kind of photos and  memories of this time that they spent living in a community as they do on the facebook page for the volunteers of  Oaklands Park, the Camphill where I learned to grow vegetables and where I met Adele, my wife. This is something from the past as most kibbutzim have stopped taking volunteers as have most Camphill communities.

To get to the Sea of Galilee we drove through the Jordan valley. Knowing that the Jordan valley has very fertile soil and produces a lot of fruit and veg I imagined this somewhat differently. First of all the Jordan does not look like a mythical river. Most of the time it looks like you could almost jump over it. And the landscape it is flowing through is a harsh desert environment, with sun scorched hills on both sides and the fences of the Jordanian border on the left for some of the way. We drove by date plantations and vegetable growing operations, most of them were probably run by Israeli settlements, since Palestinians have only limited access to water.

and now

Upon arrival we drove through a gate with a "Private" sign and past industrial cowsheds
and banana plantations that were in contrast with the photos of the horseploughing and circle dancing on the website.

We rented two rooms at the Degania Bet Country Lodge, a two storey building next to the kibbutz kindergarden (that the kibbutzim apparently used to call Hotel California). It was surrounded by small individual houses and some bigger appartement buildings, that were all connected by footpaths and surrounded by well kept up and well irrigated lawns with many ornamental bushes and trees.

Hotel California

We had breakfast at the communal dining hall together with other guests and the mostly elder kibbutzniks who choose to still eat there, (my guess is that the majority of inhabitants prefers the privacy of their homes for meals) but we were there as tourists and to get a feel for the place I really wanted to talk to somebody who lived there.

I bumped into Miriam, when looking for my family. She asked me if I was lost. She gave me a ride on the golf cart she was driving (because of her health). She agreed to talk to us about kibbutz life and we met in the afternoon heat. She was born in Mexico, spent part of her childhood in LA and came to Israel and soon afterwards to Degania still a child.
She is retired now. She worked in the communal laundry, later in the communal kitchen and after that she ran a printing shop at the kibbutz.

Degania Bet is still a community, lots (according to Miriam most) of kibbutzim have been privatised. But  Degania is going through changes as well. It has a population of around 500 people. The people living at the kibbutz are either members, that means they can participate in decisions and receive a salary or non-member inhabitants who pay rent for their house and the infrastructure. The members initially gave what they could (in work) and took what they needed. Now there are different levels of salary according to responsibility.
Miriam talked a lot about people who want to join these days, because of the financial safety that it offers. This is certainly a contrast to what attracted early members to join up for a life of hard work, strong community life and no or almost no private property.

The first day we had the pool to ourselves

Miriam was indignant about people on the outside call the kibbutzniks  'the millionaires', because they have a pool, and because they enjoy a extra financial safety net that people in mainstream Israel middle class do not. For the life style at the kibbutz looked more middle class than millionaire to me. It looks well kept up, but the houses look old and they are relatively small (We did not see any private lodgings from the inside). There is the pool, but 500 inhabitants share it, which is still nice. I was told that most kibbutzim have large swimming pools because they pay agricultural (lower) rates for water.

I did get the feeling that the community is aging, that most members are retired, like Miriam. Money is coming in through the kibbutz owned businesses, the dairy farm, the banana and avocado plantations, the silicon factory and tourism. But maybe not many members work there. They employ people from the outside. Like a small mirror image of our aging western societies they have to let in people from the outside to rejuvenate their community but may also be supicious that the people who are coming are mostly attracted by the material comfort that they themselves enjoy and feel entitled to.

Help in the garden

Trifin, Kaori, Carola and Gaia

This was in spring. Trifin is the garden apprentice, Kaori a wwoofer from Japan and Carola and Gaia a from a Steiner School in Germany.

Kale is back

Kale is back in season  and this year it is gorgeous, much nicer than last year. This year I have four varieties.  Green curly kale from Germany, red curly kale from Italy, russian kale and et lacinato Kale from Tuscany.

Red russian kale/ rouge de russie

Red kale

Kale Lacinato

Westerländer Winter

Sarah and Jebe

Marché a Beaune

 Sarah and Jebe just left after a week of wwoofing at the farm. They did not know each other. Sarah is from Australia and Jebe from the US.

Wild fermentation

Krauts and Kimchi
at Two chicks farm

My new year's resolution is to explore fermented food. I recently started experiementing with Kimchi. I got two books about fermentation for christmas. And here in North Carolina fermentation seems to be en vogue. We visited the work shop of Two Chicks farm, who grow veg and produce fermented and pickled food. One of them has just done a workshop with Sandor Katz, the author of The Art of Fermentation.

The same day we visited friends , who just happend to have a larder full of home made mead, Kimchi in the fridge and all books by Sandor Katz in the kitchen.

summer into autumn

friday's harvest

wintersalades planted after first tomatoes to be ripped out

cucumbers about to be taken out by Mize from Japan

This is the time, when there are still the summer crops, but I also have to take things out off the tunnels to make place for autumn planting of spinach, corn salad etc. Some tomatoes and the cucumbers have already come out.

Wwoofers

Mitzo and Marc in the sea of beans

Mathieu from Strasbourg who stayed with us for two weeks and just left. I should have handed him a golden bean, for he picked a lot.

Movie about Yan

Here is a link for a movie about Yan and the farm by the cook's atelier in Beaune.

Market in Beaune

This is Henrik, our wonderful  wwoofer from denmark at market in les halles in Beaune.

Blog @ arte

Pendant les prochaine six mois on sera present avec un blog sur une site d'arte. Pendant cette temps ce blog va etre rarement acutalisé car je ne pas le temps pour deux blogs. During the next six months we will have a blog that is part of a web project of the french-german Tv-station arte. During this time this blog will be mostly dormant. In den 6 kommenden Monaten haben wir einen blog der Teil einer Internetinitiative von arte ist. Dieser blog bleibt in der Zeit in Ruhephase.

tomato season

Some of the tomatoes harvested this week, last week was peak tomatoes time. And with June and July so wet and cold, all my tomatoes were really ill very early I had already thought that I would have ripped them out by now.

Hong Kong connection

I forgot to post the picture of our three wwoofers from Hong Kong, who stayed with us for two weeks in July and left after having cooked a nice meal for us. The way they cook involves a lot of cutting tiny pieces of vegetables. They spent all day preparing this meal.

Chantier participatif

The outside of our new building at the portail and some of the people who got their hands dirty making it look that way.

Suna makes sushi

Suna is our wwoofer from South Korea. She is staying three months and we are so happy to have her.

Rotten June

June was rotten. The weather was and still is terrible, it is cold and rainy. This is bad news for the garden and the farm. The potatoes are going to be a complete disaster, the tomatoes are all sick (potato blight) but many other things don't grow either. We have not been able to harvest a lot of hay yet and the quality is not getting better as time passes, the grass becomes to ripe and is more straw like. The animals have a lot of parasites (which love the wet weather).

We had some really disruptive wwoofers and let them stay much to long, but now they left.

Frida lost her puppies. She had to have a caesarian, but they were all dead.

Sounds gloomy, at least the tomatoes are hanging in there, at first I thought I would have to rip them out right away, but they just started to produce in earnest. I hope summer is finally showing up.

The guest house

This being human is like a guest house,
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

 Rumi
 kinda translated by Coleman Barks

The yard is done

We are so happy, maybe it looks a bit bleak, but before it was just a mudhole and now I can acces the former stable by car and load and unload vegetables. This is where the cold store is and where I am going to prepare and wash vegetables in the future. Terre de liens paid for it. Gotta do some landscaping now and fence in those ducks, because they poop everywhere.

Lunch at the portail

These days we always seem to be a lot of people at lunch. To the right is Emerson, a wwoofer from Haiti who stayed with us for two weeks and just left.

Another wwoofer

On this picture Charles, a wwoofer and Yannick who might want to be an apprentice in the garden are potting pumpkins.

First wwoofer

Our very first wwoofer, Frederic, from Lyon stayed and worked at the farm for 10 days, he arrived by bikeat the stable during the first milking with the machine. WWoof stands for Worldwide opportunities on organic farms, it is an organisation that encourages people to work for half a day in exchange for food and accomodation on organic farms all other the world and provides a list of adresses of farms that accept wwoofers.