Weeding on October 7
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Weeding on October 7

This is the greenhouse where Abby’s busload of volunteers pulled weeds. (All photos courtesy Abigail Klein Leichman)
This is the greenhouse where Abby’s busload of volunteers pulled weeds. (All photos courtesy Abigail Klein Leichman)

During our 20 years in Teaneck, one of the joys of living on Cherry Lane was having Limone’s Farm just up the block on Palisade Avenue. Buying produce where it’s grown is a novelty in suburbia. I also recall escorting my children and their classmates on nursery school trips to Abma’s Farm in Wyckoff for pumpkin picking and hayrides.

That was the sum total of my agricultural experiences, if you could call them that.

My first 16 years in Israel were not much different. I pick the fruit that our gardener nurtures in our backyard — nectarines, peaches, grapes, pears, kumquats, pecans, and an occasional pomegranate — but I don’t perform any of the tasks required to grow them, nor do I have a vegetable garden.

The confluence of October 7 and my semiretirement presented a new opportunity to get in on farming at the ground floor, so to speak.

The October 7 Hamas attacks in the southwest, and the continuous Hezbollah attacks since October 8 across the north, have devastated farms in several ways.

In the Gaza area, foreign farmworkers were killed, injured, kidnapped, or scared away (and some Gazan farmworkers were among the terrorist gangs). Equipment was deliberately destroyed and/or stolen, and many agricultural fields set ablaze. Farmers couldn’t even get to their fields for a long time. Some places remain inaccessible.

This ongoing crisis hasn’t just raised the prices of produce. It’s also left farmers severely shorthanded, to the point where acres and acres of crops wilt or rot for lack of personnel to tend and pick them.

Israelis always plunge in to help in a crisis, and indeed several organizations are aiding farmers financially and practically. One of these organizations, Leket Israel, sends buses twice a week to various cities, including mine, to transport volunteers to farms needing hands.

Abby picks lemons.

Leket, founded by former Teaneck resident Joseph Gitler in 2003, has become Israel’s largest food rescue and distribution network. In addition to rescuing surplus prepared foods and produce for distribution via 296 partner agencies serving some 330,000 needy people weekly, Leket also partners directly with farms raising vegetables specifically for Leket recipients.

Therefore, Leket knows which farms need help when. Since I stopped working full time in March, I have picked grapefruits, fava beans, clementines, and lemons. Another time, independent of Leket, I went with a cadre from my neighborhood to assemble produce boxes at a lettuce farm.

What I have learned — duh — is that farming entails a never-ending string of labor-intensive, dirty, difficult, exhausting, sometimes painful (if you’ve ever picked lemons from their thorny trees, or had grapefruits bonk you on the head, you know what I mean), and yet ultimately exhilarating tasks.

Each farmer begins by describing what happened locally on October 7, and then hands out equipment — gloves, clippers, shoulder bags, or buckets — and explains what to do. The farmers provide refreshments, sometimes a full lunch. And at the end, they take a picture of the crew with the collected bounty and invite us to take home as much as we can carry.

I will never again look at a pile of supermarket produce without picturing all that went into getting each piece to the shelf. Planting, weeding, fertilizing, irrigating, trimming, staking, harvesting, inspecting, packaging, transporting… I’m sure I am missing additional steps.

One of my WhatsApp volunteer groups publicized a Leket trip on October 7 to pack produce on a northern Negev farm. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend this sad day than doing something productive and helpful.

Before the sun rose, I made my way to the rendezvous point at 5:50 a.m. There were stops along the way in Jerusalem. At 65, I seemed to be the youngest of the 15 volunteers; the age range is usually more varied. I suppose this was because we were to pack and not pick.

However, when we arrived about three hours later (including a pit stop), we were told there was a miscommunication; there was no work for us at that moment. Our bus captain got on the phone and found a nearby farm that needed workers.

Abby packages fava beans.

We entered a huge hothouse — I do mean hot! We were sweating within minutes — and were instructed to pull weeds from row upon row of parsley, coriander, and beet leaves. Even the head farmer, at 74, was older than me.

While pulling on my gloves, I surveyed the space in wonder. Our feet were sunk in a vast expanse of beige sand crisscrossed with miles of black irrigation hoses and neat lines of veggies.

The Negev, it must be remembered, is a desert where nobody in their right mind ever dreamed of growing crops. That the Negev from east to west has become a major breadbasket is what people mean when referring to the modern state of Israel “blooming the desert.”

For about two hours, we squished our way down the damp sandy rows, bending and squatting and sitting in order to pull out the unwanted vegetation. Being rather close to Gaza, we heard planes and booms periodically as we worked. But no sirens.

The weeding brought on nostalgia for some of the old-timers. They talked about their immigrant parents foraging in the then-wilds of Jerusalem for edible greens to add flavor and nourishment to soups, stews, and stuffed vegetables, each according to the culinary tradition of wherever they came from.

However, it also brought on aches and pains. This was not the work these seniors had signed up for. Though they attacked the task with determination, within a couple of hours it was evident that most of the group couldn’t continue.

And so it was decided to cut short what was meant to have been a four-hour shift. I must admit I was relieved to know I could get into the shower that much sooner.

When the bus captain blew his whistle to signal us to wrap up our weeding, I lingered a little longer at my labors. A fellow volunteer tapped me on the shoulder. “Chamuda,” she said, using a term of endearment usually employed for cute little girls, “we’re leaving.”

The farmer gifted each of us with beautiful fresh-picked lettuce, and off we went on our blessedly air-conditioned minibus, back to Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim.

As each volunteer disembarked, a hearty round of wishes for “gmar chatimah tova” — literally, “a good final sealing,” referring to the upcoming Day of Judgment — rang out, and we all went home with a sense of satisfaction and shoes caked with the dirt of this holy land.

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