Well, You Can Eat Shiloh Eggs

My neighbor is mentioned in yesterday's Haaretz:-

7,000 eggs a day

Other organic farmers in the West Bank include Yona Tzoref of the Shiloh settlement and Aharon Gayan of Itamar. Tzoref, 60, is proud that the 8,000 free-range chickens he raises - which are fed a mixture of organic grains comprised of wheat, corn and 15 percent minerals - lay about 7,000 eggs a day.

First it was perfume and now it's eggs and organic farming:-


Good eggs from the West Bank

Avri Ran is a leader of the Hilltop Youth movement from the West Bank settlement of Itamar. He has been acquitted of charges of assaulting an Israeli Arab and a left-wing activist, and residents of the Arab village of Yanun accuse him of harassing villagers. But Ran's right-wing activities are not his only claim to fame: He is also one of the largest suppliers of organic eggs in the country.

Ran is one of 10 to 15 organic farmers growing produce in the West Bank, but for all the controversy surrounding the settlements and outposts, the organic farming industry pays scant attention to where the stuff is grown.

Ornit Raz, head of Israel's organic farmers association, said the group "doesn't deal with politics," such as where the organic farms are located. "We examine the produce that comes from everywhere, according to its quality and our professional standards."

To demonstrate the separation between the political and the agricultural, Raz mentions Ran, who aside from being responsible for much of the growth of the organic egg industry, also uses his thousands of dunams to grow wheat used to make organic flour, and produces cheeses and yogurts made from goat's milk.

"He is an excellent farmer, straight and reliable," said Raz. "We as an association look at him from a professional and ethical standpoint, not a political one."

7,000 eggs a day

Other organic farmers in the West Bank include Yona Tzoref of the Shiloh settlement and Aharon Gayan of Itamar. Tzoref, 60, is proud that the 8,000 free-range chickens he raises - which are fed a mixture of organic grains comprised of wheat, corn and 15 percent minerals - lay about 7,000 eggs a day.



(Haaretz trying to be funny. Arab says: "Would that we be caged up so".

Gayan, an evacuee from the Gush Katif settlement of Kfar Darom, said Itamar, the center of organic farming in Samaria, has an advantage over other parts of the country.

"At a height of between 650 and 900 meters above sea level, it's cooler and the greenhouses aren't as hot, so the fruit ripens even in the late summer months, which are hotter, and there's still an abundance of produce in the fall," he said. Gayan said he took out a NIS 200,000 loan to set up greenhouses on three dunams and grow dozens of tons of beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, strawberries, zucchini and eggplant on another five dunams of land.

But although some of the organic farmers are succeeding, the industry is not flourishing in the West Bank, said Shivi Drori, the coordinator of the Agriculture Ministry's agricultural council for the central and northern West Bank.

Drori, who lives in the Givat Harel outpost near Shiloh and owns a non-organic winery, said organic farming in the West Bank is on the decline, especially for deciduous fruit and olive orchards.

Ariel Ben Sheetrit's difficulties in running his organic vineyard are indicative of some of the problems other organic farmers face.

The Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in Sheetrit's organic orchard on the outskirts of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar are not looking good. On many mornings, clouds glide over to the small valley at the edge of his house, and the accompanying rain brings with it a fungus that afflicts the leaves of the grapevines he planted seven years ago.

Ben Sheetrit puts a lot of effort into his 35-dunam vineyard in his attempts to offset the various threats, while adhering to the main principle of organic farming: not using chemicals. He isn't always successful.

As an alternative to spraying chemical compounds on his crops, Ben Sheetrit weeds the vineyard himself, getting rid of the couch grass weed growing near the grapevine stems by covering them with black plastic sheets.

Staunch ideologues

With all the extra work involved, it is perhaps no surprise that, according to Drori, "quite a few farmers who tried to use organic growth methods gave up.

"It's difficult, expensive and less economical," he said. "You have to be a staunch ideologue - not only regarding the Land of Israel, but also regarding this growth method and lifestyle - to stick with it, and not everyone can do it."

Although Ariel Ben Sheetrit's task is made more difficult by the strictures imposed by organic farming, he appears to bear the traits of the ideologue that Drori recommends.

Next to his vineyard, Ben Sheetrit has built one of the only wineries in Israel that produces organic wine. One type of wine is called Shoham, "after the stone of Joseph the Righteous in the [High Priest's] breastplate," he explained. Another is called Pura, after one of the words for a winepress used in Isaiah. Ben Sheetrit, a former student at the Kever Yosef [Joseph's Tomb] yeshiva, wrote the text used on the wine labels himself.

"The grapevines put down roots with us in the earth of the good land, and breathe its air until the roots strike the heart of the land," he wrote. "The wine production process, from the planting of the grapevines to the sealing of the bottles, uses Hebrew labor by the young people of Israel, to give pleasure to the Creator, may His name be blessed."

Ben Sheetrit is also thankful for nature's bounty, noting that the vineyard doesn't need much watering because nature "gave us almost everything, and the earth has everything the grapevine needs."