Rain Rain Rain

I've lived in Israel for 20 years. There are many things someone who moves here learns about and adjusts to. One is rainy season. In Israel there is NO rain all summer and we wait and pray for rain during the rainy season - winter. 

I grew up in Rhode Island where there is rain all year round. My husband grew up in Louisiana - one of the wettest states in the US.

So, what happens in Israel - like I said NO rain all summer. You get used to it. I can't even understand why there's a weather report every day. In the summer it is either hot, hotter than usual or less hot than usual. 

We don't expect rain - we don't even pray for rain in the summer. We start to pray for rain in the fall at the end of the Succoth holiday. It makes sense, we start asking G-d for rain when it is proper - when we're in the rainy season. We stop praying for rain in the spring, at Passover when we leave the rainy season.

After such a long period of no rain, when winter comes you'd think we'd be ready for rain. We never are. And on the farm it can be a big mess. Because the ground is so dry, if the rain continues for too many days, it just ends up sitting with no where to go. Streams fill and fill and fields become lakes. 

Our animal area has become a lake too. We had to move all our sheep and goats to our neighbor's. Thanks to our son and some very hard-working and strong friends of his and thanks to our neighbor.

Our ducks were happy, but I learned that even ducks need dry land. We've been pumping for weeks hoping to clear out water and hopefully plan better for next year.

משיב הרוח ומוריד הגשם

What happens during olive season

We’re almost at the end of olive season. We’ve got about 45 olive trees. Most are syrian olives and a few are manzanillo (sometimes called spanish).

We start picking right after Succoth. We’ve got some friends, Ron and Marty, who enjoy helping us and come out everyday to pick. This year we have a volunteer, Michael, helping us out as well.

So it’s pick, pick, pick. We pick by hand and we use an olive picking machine. The machine looks likes a rake. We hook it up to a battery and it shakes the olives off the trees.

We put plastic around the trees so when the olives fall it’s easier to see them and pick them up.

We cure and spice the manzanillo olives. This year we’ll have enough olives to last us at least until Pesach. If they come out good, we’ll share them with our friends who helped us.

We bring the other olives to press and make oil. Since it's just us, it takes time to finish picking all the olives. As we pick, we store them in a large refrigerator. We try not to store the olives more than a couple of weeks before we bring them to the press. So we usually end up going to the press 2 or 3 times a season. This year we’ve been there twice and we have about 75 liters of olive oil. We’ll probably go once more.

I usually put aside enough olive oil for us and we bottle and sell the rest. It’s 100% olive oil and it’s delicious.

As we’re working, we trim the trees to keep them healthy. As usual, nothing is wasted at Meshek Muslow. The sheep and goats eat all the trimmed branches. Anything they don’t eat, we chip.