From 2008 I got to know the term sustainability, which was called back then environment. In those years, I managed the Ganey Am community, there was no possibility of courting, the discourse on the planet was right on the fringes. In the same year, the Drom Hasharon Regional Council sold composters to the residents, I took on a task and sold about 70 composters to the residents of Ganey Am (about 100 families) out of 200 composters that were sold all over the council. The council took agronomy as a project manager to implement the use of the composter. The agronomy introduced me to the world of environment and I was inspired by it, I decided to establish a recycling center which is actually a center for sorting garbage for recycling. In addition, I decided to change the attitude towards the treatment of cuttings, one of the most difficult problems in managing a rural settlement. I presented my ideas to the committee and received their blessing to start the change.
In 2009, I actually started planning what and how to do it, I started explaining to the residents why it would be forbidden to throw clippings and scraps in the street, I announced the move, I did a campaign. On 1.1.20210 we started the pruning revolution, from that day, we moved our clippings to a clipping collection center where we crushed the clippings and spread the mulch in the public areas to prevent weeds. Immediately after that, we opened the recycling center and in 2010 it was a groundbreaking event that was published in the press and turned our recycling center into a focal point for pilgrimage from the region and all over the country. Following our footprints, recycling centers were established throughout the regional council and even today, 15 years later, they still crush grass clippings in public gardens
The next step was to transform the Ganey Am community from an existing community to a sustainable community, I adhered to the parameters set by the UN for a sustainable community and discovered to my surprise that we are quite close to the model. (More about the process in the post
In December 2019, I decided that I wanted to study agriculture, I searched and came across the "Hava Ve Adam" course. I didn't really know what I was signing up for, but one visit made it clear to me that I had come to the right place... Every Monday at five to one, I would disconnect from the keyboard, put on mud clothes and shoes, get into the car and after about forty minutes enter the gates of the farm.
When you enter the farm, you have the feeling of entering a magical paradise, in a mixture of smells, sights and sounds of nature, you pass the big mulberry tree, the water reservoir and the vineyard and reach the field. There, Idan our teacher, would explain and teach what we will be doing today and I would devote myself to the physical work - weeding, planting, sowing, setting up flower beds, or anything else that was in the plan for that day and three hours later, all covered in mud, I would go out to the car with a box full of all the goodness of the land that we grew with our own hands With smells of fresh vegetables and earth that filled the car space.
Then the corona virus broke out... the first months of the first lockdown, uncertainty and a lot of worries and when we went out of the lockdown, I returned to the farm, I realized how much I missed it, how important the connection to the land, plants and nature is to me and what it does to my soul and I decided to make it a profession.
I signed up for therapeutic gardening studies at the Kibbutzim Seminar and waited for the studies to begin. In the meantime, I finished half a year of agricultural studies and decided that in the winter I would prepare an area on our farm for growing vegetables. At the end of August we started cultivating the area and immediately entered the second closure. The area became a physical, emotional and mental refuge, we grew vegetables that succeeded beyond imagination and at the same time I began to study therapeutic gardening at Zoom. I realized practically what it does to me and how much it affects me. And if it affects me... probably other people too.
At this stage, I also brought the message to the Ganey Am community and that year I ran a Corona camp every Friday for Ganey Am children who did not study on Fridays. The contents from the world of nature and gardening made it clear to me that I am not wrong - nature is indeed, important to all of us, intuitive and connects us to something ancient and greater than all of us.
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