They have taken a desert country and planted millions of trees and changed the climate. They drained the swamps and basically eradicated the malaria that used to plague the area.
But still a huge chunk of Israel is desert and the only people that live there are the few hardy Bedouin and the transient soldiers who go to the desert to train. To most people, this would be virtually unusable land and the very definition of desolate.
If you drive south from the Dead Sea through the Arava Valley that separates Israel from Jordan, you will be struck by the beauty and the bleakness of the landscape.
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| The view from Yotvata in the Arava Valley |
After an hour of driving through the desert and gawking at the hills and wadis, suddenly you will come across the road-side stop of the kibbutz Yotvata.
If the wind is blowing just right, you might catch a whiff of something you would never expect to smell in the desert: cow manure.
That's right, the kibbutz somehow has a very large dairy farm in the middle of the Southern Negev. With no grass or hay fields in sight, Yotvata manages to feed 700 cows and produce 63% of Israel's milk needs.
I can't figure out what they are feeding those cows. Sand?
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| A carton of our milk and the shopping centre of the Kibbutz it came from. |
Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, used to say that Israel's future is in the Negev. I am not sure he expected a dairy farm but he would probably have applauded the obvious stick-to-it-ness of Yotvata.
2 comments:
The blog reminded me of our trip to Eilat. When we were getting near Eilat, there was the smell of cows and then finally seeing large herds. I too wondered what those cows ate. They must bring the food in by boat by way of the Red Sea. Remember the store we stopped at with the holstein cow statues around the walkway into the store. Just something you do not expect to see driving through a desert.
That's the place, mom!
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