קומפוסט (compost)

There is something magical about this place – only here could anyone convince me to get up at 5:30 in the morning to dig through dumpsters of rotting food and manure. We started our week bright and early Sunday morning in the eco-kef to make our first sheet mulch garden bed. Essentially, we took bin after bin of organic waste and made a big pile that in a few months will have decomposed for us to plant corn in. Composting is starting to consume my thoughts, and on Sunday its presence in my mind was especially intense... the nasty taste and smell of our long pile of future soil haunted me the entire morning and well into the afternoon. However, as disgusting as the experience was, it was sort of fun in a way – composting is beneficial in many ways that a lot of people don’t think about. Not only is compost an amazing source of nutrients for gardens, but it is a way of recycling waste that would otherwise continue to produce more waste – garbage takes gas to be transported to a landfill, where it takes up space and is sealed off so it cannot decompose aerobically. Instead, harmful gasses are released into the environment as it rots. Composting is a simple and very easy way to turn waste into food that doesn’t have to be smelly or attract animals. I hope that when I get home I will be able to continue composting and that more will follow.

Fortunately, I got to leave the stench of the sheet mulch compost bed for my first Hebrew lesson. I’m really excited to be learning the language – it’s going really well and I can tell that within one week my vocab has grown drastically. Being around so many Israelis, its exciting to be starting to understand bits of their conversations. Then, after breakfast, we spent the majority of the day in the classroom for our gardening class, and the first session of our permaculture course. By two months from now I should have my official Permaculture Design Certificate. Permaculture, in case you were wondering (I didn’t know the definition until about two weeks ago), means permanent agriculture – basically, it is all things sustainability, closing of cycles, growing food, etc. It’s all super inspiring and thought-provoking, but we are all suffering a little from what we call the “greenroom effect”: our classroom is called the greenroom, and whenever we go in it we fall asleep from the heat. Its not too bad, though, because we spend most of our time outside.

On Monday we checked in with our compost piles, continued discussing the 10 principles of permaculture, and had a lesson on the history of Kibbutz Lotan, which is soon to be entering its 30th year. More importantly, however, Monday night was Israeli dancing night. A delegation of about ten of us from the bustan showed up, and our hilarious “dance teacher” taught us some “Israeli folk dancing” (although, I don’t know if I would call the Macarena an Israeli dance). I laughed harder than I have in a long time – it was really fun, and apparently we are now all in a dance troupe that meets every week... we’ll see. Tuesday morning we started our first big mud building project. At the eco-kef (Lotan’s eco-tourism playground and educational garden space) are the beginnings of a mini-golf course made of recycled materials. We spent the morning building a mud bench that might become part of the golf course. After about 3 hours we finished the first and second coats of mud, which are over a base structure made of recycled tires filled with plastic garbage. Tomorrow we’ll add the last two coats and see how it looks! We cleaned off  that afternoon with some time in the pool and then at night I met some of the other teens my age that are living at the kibbutz. Everyone is really cool, and I’m excited to be making some more friends outside of my program so I can become more a part of the kibbutz community.

This morning we woke up early to plant a garden in our neighborhood. Among others, we planted basil, corn, beans, squash, cilantro, onion and dill. A lot of the plants are right outside my window so hopefully in a week or two I will see some green in front of the goat pen. I am planning to experiment this week with growing a plum tree to see if I can get one to sprout in this climate. We also had a green architecture class all afternoon, and now we’re off to celebrate a friend’s birthday! 

More later!