Visit to a Kibbutz.....

Today, we were invited to a kibbutz by my hubby's colleague. A Kibbutz is a community of people living together. Its like a huge agricultural place where people grow their crops and breed livestocks like cows, chickens etc and the proceeds from it are shared among the people. They also have their own schools, child care center, recreational places like soccer field, swimming pools etc. Very self-sufficient. The idealogy of kibbutz is something like socialism, where everyone is equal and have the same property/possessions, everyone working for the common good, meaning everyone salary is given to the kibbutz and from there, it gets distributed to everyone. I was quite shocked to hear that and I dont think I can accept that way of thinking coz its like my salary not longer belongs to me but to everyone. Basically, I dont own anything as everything I owned belonged to everyone. Sounds communist to me.....anyway, it was an interesting experience for me knowing such culture actually exist!

 The childcare center, or school. In a Kibbutz, the children don't sleep at their parents' place which the reason is because it is supposed to give the parents rest during the night, which is very important as they have to work very early the next day.

 The kids playing with junks and other abandoned parts or machines. Its like their toys. Here, the children dont have fancy toys like what kids in Singapore have. Kindda feel bad for them but they looked so happy playing with the junks using juz their imagination that they cant even be bother with us.

Entrance to the chicken farm

SO many chickens!

The blue lighting is supposed to be calming for the chickens. Here, they are breed for their meat and not their eggs. Heard that it always one or the other and never breed for both. The place is actually very clean and the chickens are free to roam about and not cage up. 

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 Taking a break outside Amit's house with light refreshment. He have 5 children! We all sat together and chit chat until the time is ready for our next stop.

 Next stop: The cow farm

 Moo.....the stench was horrid....

 New born calf, being kept separated from the rest.

 Manure from the cows were collected and used as fertilizer for the crops that they were growing. Nothing goes to waste again.

 The farm manager guy with the long pigtail. He had many coloured rubber bands on it. So interesting...wonder what is the significance of it? Behind him is the storehouse storing food such as carrots, grains etc for the cows.

The machine that mixes the food from the storehouse and makes them into food for the cow.

 The place where the cows are milked.

Last stop: the sandwich factory. Really! There's even a sandwich factory in the kibbutz. The sandwiches are then distributed and sold all over Israel, even into Lebanon.

Hubby and I getting dressed and ready to enter the kitchen of the sandwich factory. It smells really nice inside. We all have to wash our hands and clean and sanitize our shoes before stepping inside. Its a good thing this is the last stop as we are wondering how are we going to Novak's house (my hebrew teacher) after smelling off cow dung, especially since Weizhong accidentally stepped on a big pile of cow manure.

 

After this, we went to have late lunch before going for our hebrew lessons. Its been a tiring day. I cant wait to go home and take a shower.