Orders Back Open . . .
Next pick-up at our pick-up CSA locations will be late March. Orders by mail still open and welcome.
And Then It Rained in the Desert
“Once every five or six years we get between 20 and 30 millimeters of rain,” Doron, Negev Nectars’ olive grower, explained by cellular phone (the landlines were shut down). He was explaining that it’s been a particularly wet year even before this latest round of precipitation. Earlier this year the Negev experienced both a 22 mm and 32 mm rainfall, and the river beds were flowing (see previous post).
Then just this past week, Sunday through Tuesday, additional storms hit the region and the rain did not let up. The desert experienced the kind of rainfall that it only sees every one hundred years or so. The extent of the rain, according to Doron, amounted to at least 60 millimeters. ”Up in the mountains it was 100 mm,” he noted. “Night and Day rain did not stop.”
Generally over the course of a typical year the Central Negev receives about 200 mm of rainfall of a year. Thus, receiving between one half and one third of that amount in one fell swoop has major environmental implications for the region. See the Haaretz article here on the devastation of the Negev region’s infrastructure.
The wadis are overflowing. The Nitzana river looks like the Dan River up in the North. Hikers who stopped to watch the forcefulness of the riverbeds have gone missing and have been found dead. Many bridges have collapsed, including a bridge built by the Turks for major flooding occurrences. The power has been cut off, as well. All this, Doron suggests, illustrates just how powerful the storm has been. ”It’s unbelievable,” he kept on saying. ”Water is the most powerful force in nature.”
What does this mean for Negev growers? Well, for many it’s been difficult for some, including the growers of Kadesh Barnea whose greenhouse irrigation systems won’t work without electricity. This directly affects producers like Desert Magic, one of Negev Nectars’ partners. Too much rainfall all at once can often be disastrous; their soil might wash away, their plants might be overloaded with water, and if they use brackish water, like Doron and Kibbutz Neot Smadar, the walls of salt in the soil that surround the roots of the plants or trees might be penetrated and the roots may take in salt. Doron usually runs to his orchard the minute rain begins falling to turn on his irrigation pump, to add brackish water to the mix to make sure his cultivated saltwater defenses don’t break down.
Doron has been rather fortunate in this storm. Given the previous rainfall this year plants have cropped up throughout the region and flowers abound. Those new plants held Doron’s topsoil in place, so the flooding did not rob him of those valuable nutrients. And even though his irrigation system could not work in the 60 mm flood since all power was cut by the storm, the extent of the flooding washed all the salt out of the soil, ridding the soil of the salt walls rather than just penetrating the defenses. The trees, be believes, are in great shape and will have a splendid growing year. ”I’m lucky,” he reminded me and himself. But there’s a lot of work he must do, and others have not been so fortunate.
Winter in The Desert
At Orlyya Farm.