"THE" Moshav

We had rented a car from Tuesday until the end of my inlaws visit for our trip to Eilat. Since Jason had some... er... time on his hands, we decided to make use of it on the Tuesday and go somewhere we might not have otherwise gone. So we packed off and after running a errand in Tel Aviv made our way to the Carlebach Moshav.

The day sort of how you would expect things to go in hippie commune. First we got horribly lost trying to find the place. Yes it should have been easy, but it wasn't. We did however find a tiyul for next chanukah in the hashmonean village. Looks interesting!

Then, once we got there Channah had missed the part of the tour she had been really excited to do. She had been saying all morning that she wanted to milk a goat, and by the time we got there the kids had all moved on to other things. Fortunately the woman in charge was really nice and said we could come back and milk a goat after the rest of the day's activities so Channah was pretty happy about the whole thing. Of course, by the time we got back to the goats she had realized that you need to *touch& them in order to milk them, so she chickened out (although, speaking of chickens, I must admit I did not realize how pretty some of them can be! They really can look like the rockette chickens on the muppet show.

She got to make a picture on wax paper using crayon shavings and flowers, card and spin wool, and make a mobile from various colours of clay found around the country. We never did get to make the cheese, but were given instructions as to how we can do so at home.

Channah carding wool



Channah doing the wax picture



Then came twenty minutes of discussion as to whether we should go on the tour first, or have lunch first. It was decided tour. Then lunch. Ok. Other than the fact that Channah was getting hungry and we knew we could tide her over, we were okay.

Once the kids activities were done we went to the ancient olive oil press for a short history lesson about the area we were in. I do have to admit that the thing that surprised me most about the ruins was the fact you could not smell them from a mile away... The man giving the talk had a few archeological pieces he had collected including some thought to be from the time period of the Chanukah story (hey, we were in the right area so why not?). The kids on the trip were ecstatic about the idea. From there we headed down to lunch.

Channah examining some local finds


playing in the ruins



Lunch was not ready as apparently the oven was not working right. Ok, no problem, they took orders for felafel and drove off to go get them, leaving us to wander around a gorgeous area of the country on our own. We had a woman show us "THE" house on "THE" Moshav.

"THE" house


Channah was excited to show off her budding botanical skills. Get it? Budding...



We sat around outside on some rocks until lunch showed, up, than ate in the park before going into the shul for a short Moshav Band concert.

Concert in the shul



Sign of a day well spent


That night, even my father in law went a little hippie on me...