It's peak citrus blossom season and the fragrance that permeated the clementine groves was incredible but so was the heat - high of around 35 Celsius.
We wore long sleeves because these are not only the biggest clementines you've ever seen but they grow on trees with the biggest thorns you've ever seen, some a few inches in length, far larger than on any of the other citrus farms we've volunteered on. Totally different from any of the other farms where we've picked clementines, lemons, oranges or grapefruits. These were thorns which truly meant business.
We worked from about 8am until 2pm and were very glad the farmer had an ice chest full of cold drinks he brought round to us.
I think it was one of our more difficult jobs so far due to the combination of vicious thorns and strong sun (though still easier than the times we've been ankle deep in mud!) but with a nice farmer and friendly volunteers to work with it was a good day.
The volunteers were a random collection of people who got up at the crack of dawn to catch a volunteer bus down to the Gaza border region. Some we recognised from previous weeks, others were new to us. Over the months we've met people from just about every walk of life and every region of Israel out volunteering on farms and the mix of folks in this clementine orchard was no different.
Among our crew was an impressive mother daughter team, a kibbutz resident in her 80s and her daughter. They worked at twice the pace of everyone else and when there was fruit to reach high up in the tree the mother simply climbed effortlessly up the thorny branches to reach it. She said she's been harvesting citrus since she was a little girl on the kibbutz.
All together our group picked about 6 tonnes of clementines, due I'm sure to the presence of these experienced kibbutznikiot and a spry great-grandfather who was now a town dweller but had grown up on his father's farm in a northern moshav. Come to think of it the veteran high tech worker (and grandfather) from Jerusalem was also a dab hand at climbing the ferociously thorny trees.
There was fortunately an abundance of low hanging fruit for those of us less adept at tree climbing (or at least thorny tree climbing, Junior would have been happy to scale the branches otherwise) and considering the heat and the sun it was good to be in the tree's shade and fill our harvest bags with both feet firmly on the ground. Many of the trees had dense clusters of clementines hanging so low that it was possible to even sit on the ground under the trees to pick them.
In the background there was cheerful spring birdsong drowned out by the occasional thunder of artillery and explosions from the fighting in nearby southern Gaza. It's been the "soundtrack" in many of the farms we've been to, sometimes louder, sometimes more distant or muffled, but somehow it's not something you ever entirely get used to.
The army has re-opened the now infamous Route 232 "road of death" near the Gaza border to civilian traffic. Winter rains mean that wild grasses and wildflowers have regrown over charred verges. The horrific remains of the murderous Hamas rampage through the area have been cleaned up. The eerily cheerful murals painted long ago on the roadside public shelters that became death traps give no clue to the carnage that took place within them other than the small ZAKA burial squad notices indicating that all human remains have been cleared from them. It all looks so deceptively bucolic and peaceful save for the odd burnt row of trees.
As we drove by Junior asked how they could still be left there with their bright paintings after Hamas slaughtered hundreds of civilians who sought shelter from rockets but instead were mown down by Hamas gunmen shooting and lobbing grenades. "It would be like taking shelter in a grave or the cremetoria at Aushwitz." There are so many Israelis who feel that way, and not just about the roadside public shelters on Route 232, they have become associated with the October 7 massacre in the minds of many, reminders of how something designed to offer protection was turned by Hamas in to a means for mass murder.
We tried to dwell on the positive though, on the many freshly harvested and ploughed fields, the rebuilt greenhouses and warehouses, the busy tractors and farm workers, migrating storks and raptors, meadows of wheat turning from green to golden with the heat of spring.
And all the minibuses, so many, taking groups of volunteers to yet more Israeli farms in the Gaza border, organised by Israeli NGOs like Leket, Hashomer Hahadash, Hiburim Behaklaut and small grassroots groups: communities, synagogues, educational frameworks and employee associations. Thousands of ordinary Israelis going out to do what they can to help farms through these rough times, help the moshavim, kibbutzim and towns rebuild.
The war is far from over, just tonight Hamas fired rockets again at Netivot, Sderot and Ashkelon, but Israelis are determined to restore not just life, but thriving life, to this region.
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