I want to thank everyone who's dropped me a note to see how we are doing, I greatly appreciate the kind words and support. For much of the last ten months, starting with a few days after the October 7th Hamas invasion, I've been volunteering in local agriculture, and there are still so many farms in desperate need. I don't even know where to begin. The attack itself was as much against local food production as against people, there was massive damage to farms, dairies, farm equipment, greenhouses, logistics centres, orchards, fields, livestock, and of course the many agricultural workers who were murdered, injured, taken hostage and displaced. This in a region which is responsible for at least 20% of the country's agricultural output, including something like 60-70% of staple crops like tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and more. I'm not a farmer by any stretch of the imagination (even my gardening skills are somewhat borderline) but when there is a crisis like this you do what you can and thankfully I'm reasonably strong and healthy so along with tens of thousands of other ordinary civilians (including vast numbers of pensioners) we started going out to volunteer on farms to ensure the country's food security. Much of the work is picking and packaging produce for local supermarkets and green grocers, as well as for donations to refugees and others in need. And that's been a lot of what I've been doing for the last ten months. If I'm not out working in agriculture I'm trying to help coordinate volunteers to help farms in need and when possible there is no end of meals to cook and hallah to bake for families who need help, emergency services, displaced and so on. A lot of the volunteering is through Leket, Israel's national food rescue organisation. It was started years ago by someone who noticed the food waste on farms and from restaurants and started organising distribution of this surplus to people facing food insecurity all over the country. The name "Leket" comes from the biblical injunction to leave the corners of the field for those in need to collect. "Leket" means to collate, to collect. The project is a modern way for farmers to continue this tradition. The focus isn't just feeding people, but providing healthy, nutritious food, not junk. Over time they developed connections with nearly 1000 farms across the country who donated produce towards the project, as well as leftovers from wedding halls, employee cafeterias and more. All closely monitored to ensure the food was both healthy and safely stored. In addition Leket also runs nutrition education programmes in several languages, along with free healthy cookery workshops. After the devastating October 7th attacks and with damage caused by continuing rocket attacks also to Israel's northern border, another important agricultural region, Leket started getting requests for help from the farmers who for so many years had been donating produce to the Leket project. Instead of the farmers supporting Leket it was now necessary for Leket to use its organisational infrastructure to help provide assistance to these farms so that they could survive the crisis and keep the country fed. Every day buses leave from cities and towns around the country taking thousands volunteers to help work on farms and pack produce both for sale in regular shops and for donation to those in need. I'm regularly volunteering on farms down by the Gaza border and have seen first hand the devastation to the region, heard so many horrific accounts from local people about what happened to them and their communities. We harvested oranges at kibbutz Re'im right across from the park where just a few months earlier the Nova music festival massacre took place, some of those fleeing the carnage ran to the orchards to hide among the orange trees. On another farm to this day you can still see holes in the roof of the sorting barn from when rockets and RPGs fired during the October 7th invasion. Every time you go by the village of Tekuma you pass the giant "car graveyard" of vehicles torched and shot up in Hamas ambushes along these roads. Everywhere there are memorials and posters of those murdered and kidnapped. Some local farmers are still displaced, travelling to their farms from wherever they are being temporarily hosted each day to replant and tend to their crops, unable to return to their homes still because of the devastation and the security situation. Some have started to return, repairing and restoring their villages. There are yet more volunteers working to renovate and repair homes and infrastructure. There is still occasional rocket fire to the region, just the other week we were harvesting lychees on a kibbutz just a few metres from the border and right by the road there were impact craters from missiles that had hit a few days earlier. Iron Dome anti-missile defence covers populated areas but doesn't have the capacity to protect open fields, roads and nature reserves. Some areas have prefab shelters near barns or sorting sheds, but for the most part agricultural areas are wide open with no shelter. Down in the Gaza border region there are sometimes seconds' warning before a rocket strike, sometimes there is no warning before the impact. If the "Colour Red" warning goes off you lie down on the ground, keep as low as you can, put your hands over your head and pray. The biggest emergency is in the north, in the Upper Galilee on the border with Lebanon, where dozens, sometimes hundreds, of rockets and attack drones continue to rain down every day, often from such close range that there is little or no warning. They are literally taking their lives in their hands bringing in the harvest and tending to livestock and fields. It's a very precarious and volatile situation. We don't know what will be in the next few hours or the next day or the next week. Rebuilding, replanting, sowing for the next seasons are expressions of hope and faith that tomorrow will come and that maybe it will be better.