I cannot believe that I have only six days left here on the farm. What an amazing time. I still have five days in Jerusalem, and then I go to Madison, WI for four days. And then I'm home. Wow! What a trip it has been so far.I had to crash a bar mitva to see the sunset last night. I got all of the food I could eat for free!
Today started with putting the compost down in the soon-to-be greenhouse. There is nothing like the smell of camel and chicken shit in the morning. It doesn't smell like victory. But I did after I got done working.
Then I got to weed in the citrus section of the orchard. It has not been done since last year, so it is pretty tough. There was only one snake that I saw, and it took off pretty quickly. But there were lots of other creatures.
This spider was crawling up my leg. I felt it, but I though it was the weeds because I was standing in them. But nope. He is about the size of my palm. He's tough to see in the picture, but once he was off of my I didn't want to bother him too much.
Here is an image looking down the row. I've finished the tree on the left, and there are so many more to go. The picture on the right is how the trees should look after the weeds are gone.
There were so many stickers in my socks and boots, which smelled like camel and chicken shit because they were full of it, so I took them off. It felt really nice to stand in the hot sand. It is like sticking your feet in hot water.
This afternoon, while you were in that desert, I was hiking in the Alps with daughter Liz, and we were texting picures of ourselves in the Alps to Mary & Paul, who were sitting in the Panera on 4th Street in St. Pete. Now I'm in a hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland, reading about your day on the farm in Israel. Ain't that some shit, as the kids I knew used to say? What a world we live in.
ReplyDeleteI thought about one of my favorite quotes after reading your comment.
ReplyDelete“There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: A people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time-- or even knew selflessness or courage or literature-- but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.”
― Annie Dillard, For the Time Being
As much as the Romantic in me pines for the better times--from the neolithic until, you know, the good ole times--I would not want to live in another time.