The Story of the Garden
2016 was the year of the great awakening.
Here are the questions that came bursting into my awareness and demanded answers.
If one lives in Israel and reads the Torah, shouldn’t the words written in the Torah match the land under one’s feet?
And if those words once functioned as an agricultural road map, shouldn’t that road map still function in the same way today?
And if the answer to both of those questions is yes, then why isn’t someone—or anyone—still using this ultimate instructional manual in their daily life? Not only to live by, but to keep their garden by as well?
Especially if one lives in Israel.
But in 2016, there was no land under our feet. We lived on the middle floor of an apartment building. So instead of planting seeds in the earth, we earnestly planted seeds of prayer in heaven.
We prayed about the lack of land. We prayed for a piece of land where we could begin to understand the words of the Torah more clearly by actually living them.
For two years, there were hikes, prayers, and watching.
We watched the land yield to the rainy season. We watched to see what the earth produced first. We watched the wild grains and tender greens being born on the land. We watched the rains leave and the plants disappear for another year.
And we prayed some more.
Lots of prayer.
How can the words of the Torah be practiced without a little land?
During those two years of watching the land, the calendar of the Bible began to leap off the pages of Scripture. The verses and the plants began to come together before my eyes in harmonious cycles of fruitfulness.
All seven of the species listed in Deuteronomy 8:8 can still be found growing in places where they are watered and sustained only by the rain from heaven.
This became one of the keys to understanding the biblical calendar: watching and following the firstfruits of the seven species that are still watered by heaven alone, by Hashem.
And the second key is that all things point to Yeshua.
“For the land which you go to possess (Israel) is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot, as a vegetable garden; but the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven, a land for which the LORD your God cares; the eyes of the LORD your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year. And it shall be that if you earnestly obey My commandments which I command you today, to love the LORD your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil. And I will send grass in your fields for your livestock, that you may eat and be filled.”
Deuteronomy 11:10–15
“And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.”
Luke 24:27
Were these words still true?
And how could we know they were still true without having a little piece of land to watch?
The Land
In October 2016, the location that would become In the Shade of an Olive Tree became available.
Moshe and Rivkah both felt that the location and the timing were right. It was time to take a leap of faith and begin to nourish a small and modest piece of land.
For many months, we searched for a source of wood chips or wood mulch. The mulch was needed to cover the property and protect the roots of the plants from the hot Israeli sun until Elohim brought abundance to the property and mature trees could once again offer shade to the earth.
Finally, in May 2017, after an extended rainy season, fresh pine mulch was delivered to the property.
May, June, and July were spent distributing pine mulch throughout the back garden and part of the front garden, to a depth of at least eight centimeters.
Then trenches were opened through the mulch, and drip irrigation was laid throughout the back garden directly on top of the soil. The trenches were then covered again with mulch.
The result was something we had not expected.
Six citrus trees that we had thought were dead began bursting back to life, some from their roots and others from the base of what appeared to be nothing more than a dead tree stump.
The extended heavy rains of 2017 had made it impossible to plan ahead for the delivery of the pine mulch. Because of this, there had also been no opportunity to arrange for fertilizer or soil amendments before the shredded pine was placed around the property.
And the cost of delivery in Israel is extravagant. An additional delivery for manure or good worm compost would have been more than we could reasonably manage.
But it hasn’t seemed to matter.
The growth in the garden has been miraculous.
A Garden Coming Back to Life
The garden is already being called a paradise.
It has not only survived temperatures reaching 109°F (41.1°C), but it has thrived. There is a strong feeling of peace that prevails throughout the property.
Birds have begun to return. So have bees, butterflies, and dragonflies. We even have a bumper crop of lizards, including chameleons.
All of this promises something more than a productive garden.
It promises a restoration of balance to the land.
There are now more than 24 food-bearing trees on the property, fourteen of which are citrus trees. We still do not know what all of the citrus trees are because some did not have enough time to bloom during their first season of coming back to life.
What we do know is that there are pomelos, tangerines, oranges, lemons, kumquats, loquats, avocados, almonds, apples, olives, figs, pomegranates, papayas, and mangoes.
There is also an old grapevine that has come back to life, along with a newly planted passion fruit vine.
Six new trees and one vine were planted in 2019. The remaining trees were already here, waiting for someone to give them a little attention and a chance to live again.
Looking Ahead
In the coming years, the goal is to continue planting a few more food-bearing trees.
In the Shade of an Olive Tree rests on one dunam of land—about one-quarter of an acre.
The land may be small.
But יהוה is mighty to provide.
