Millions and Millions and Millions of Trees

 The baby trees are grown in a nursery and come to the farm in these boxes. Workers with various tractors and disks first prepare the soil, then others lay irrigation tubes. They place bamboo poles in mathematically perfect rows--by measuring and by "eyeballing," as Mom would say, so that the planters know just where to place each tree.

After the ground is watered for a day, one by one, all six million+ trees are planted by hand. Last year, we were told that the fastest workers could plant a thousand trees in a day. With improved soil preparation and having the protective bags already on the trees, now we hear that they are planting at twice that rate! Eventually, plastic-coated wires are strung to connect the "bamboos" and each tree is tied to the wire.

Here's what the vineyard looks like after a couple of years growth, some pruning and much work.

Besides growing trees, the farm has to move water, lots and lots of water, even though the trees only get it a drip at a time.You can see two of the big water storage lagunas. The farm has 34 wells with computerized pumps and irrigation systems and a number of these lagunas. (The building is the oil processing plant and office building being built. Our Learning Center is part of the itty bitty looking building to the left of the gigantic building.)

 The green in the photo below looks like grass--but it's thousands of trees that are 2-3 years old. 

If you look closely, you can see the new rows of trees in the foreground.

 A little tree doing its best....

Trees less than a year old with the "almasara" olive mill building in the background. With those hills and sky is it any wonder this feels like home to us?