Harvest, 2012

Here are a few pictures of our recent trip to Israel this fall.

 Colorful flowers

 Small and delicate flowers just outside the house we stayed in

 Precious baby. Her eyes really are beautiful

 Cluster of grapes, one of MANY!

 "But you, O mountains of Israel, shall shoot forth your branches..." Ezekiel 36:8
It's happening!

 Pomegranates from the Negev

 Dawn at Elon More, where Hashem made the covenant with Avraham to give this land to his descendants

 At Elon More

 Morning Glory in Hevron

 Rose in Hevron

 Grape vines on the Mount of Blessing (Har Bracha)

 Olives! We were able to help bring in lots of olives the last week or two of our trip

 More grape clusters

 Jerusalem. Temple Mount from the mount of olives

 "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of them who bring good news." Isaiah 52:7

 Gamla. "The Masada of the north"

 An old catapult at Gamla

 Vineyard in Shiloh

 The Dead Sea

 Flock taking a rest in one of the barns in Itamar

 The flag

 Another grape cluster

'En Gev, overlooking Lake Kinneret, Sea of Galilee

A Story About A Very Special Book

This was amazing! We had a long day up at Bracha (Mount of Blessing, in Israel). Just before we left, Daniel, one of the younger boys starts, showing us this little book he found in a garbage pile. We were looking at is and realized it was a little tiny prayer book. Daniel asked me if I would like him to run and grab another book from the garbage, that there were a bunch of important looking books there. I almost said "No, thanks, just leave it" because we were just about to leave, but instead said "Please, if you can get one quick." He ran off and was back real quick with this dirty, dusty, wrinkled and falling apart book, about the size of a pocket sized siddur. It was in pretty rough shape; he handed me the cover, then the rest of the book and said "I think these went together." When I opened it up, all I could really read was Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim in Hebrew, and saw the IDF emblems. That was pretty neat and exciting, a really beautiful find.

On the way home from Bracha, I had dusted off the binding and the torah and put them back together. Sitting in the van carefully holding it together, something caught my attention. I looked down at what I was holding, and realized that this Torah, the way it was worn, fit perfectly in my hand. The IDF soldier who previously owned it must have been right-handed, and we would had the same size hands.

I often wonder who was the person who owned this little book, and why it ended up in a pile of garbage up there on Bracha. There is some hand writing in the back, and it would be so neat to meet that person, and to be able to return it put back together. If it ever happens, I hope it'll be with me and it can go back to that person. But until then, and even if it doesn't happen, I'll hold onto it and learn to read.

Thinking about this made me think about the lives of so many people. We were once dirty, dusty, and falling apart. Left where we were, we would've been useless. But we were picked up, put back together and made into beautiful, useful vessels for HaShem.

Israeli Grape Harvest 2011

Israeli Grape Harvest, 2011

We had roughly 250 people for harvest this year, and were blessed to be able to bring in a whoppin 304 tons of grapes for some of Israel's wineries in Judea and Samaria. We had a blast!

Our clippers, or nippers depending on who you talk to, were very familiar to me and quite easy to use. Being a shepherdess who uses hoof trimmers, this was one of the first familiar things to me - the nippers were basi

cally hoof trimmers. :-)

Look at what these vines grow in! It's a miracle that they can grow, and produce such amazing grapes. It's not just

amazing, it's a miracle.

From here....

To here!!!

25,000 bottles of wine ready to be shipped out

Here's the web sites to 4 of the wineries we were able to work in:

Psagot Winery (Wine bottles pictured above)

Shiloh Winery (Vines pictured above)

Mount Blessing Winery

This is some of my most favorite Israeli wine, just in case you're trying to decide which to get... :-)

And last, but definitely not least,

Tura Winery (No pictures, sorry...)

We had some big days harvesting. A 15 ton day in the 115 degree heat (being used to the more cold and wet climate, this was quite different), and a 21 ton day - a record setter!