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The Garden

Jewish life under the sky, among gardens, trees, chickens, food and creation.

The garden is the least ceremonial thing Liumi does and, for a lot of people, the one that changes how the rest of it feels. Trees, beds, bees, chickens, fruit, weather, and growing things. Judaism connected to creation rather than trapped inside a building.

Garden Days are open to everyone. Bring gloves if you have them; we have spares if you do not. Community service hours are available for students.

Shayndel is a certified female farmer in the state of Florida, which is the kind of detail that tells you how seriously this is taken.

The land, piece by piece

Pollinators

The bees, and why they come first

Nothing else in the garden works without them. The hives sit out at the quiet edge of the property, and almost everything that fruits here depends on what the bees do all day without being asked or thanked. A few times a year the honey comes off the frames and goes into jars on a table, and people take it home. It is the plainest lesson the garden teaches: most of the work that ends up feeding you was done by someone you never watched doing it.

The hives
Kept on site, at the far edge of the land
The henhouse

A happy henhouse

The sign on the run says COO-COO-REE-COO, OUR HAPPY HENHOUSE, which tells you most of what you need to know about the tone. The flock free-ranges across the grass, follows people about, puts up with being carried by small children, and eats the kitchen trimmings and garden waste that would otherwise be thrown out. Feeding them is the job every visiting child volunteers for first, and the only one nobody has to be talked into.

The flock
Free-ranging, and used to visitors
Most mornings

Eggs, collected by whoever gets there first

There is a specific pleasure in lifting the lid of a nesting box and finding eggs on the shavings, still warm, pale green and blue and brown depending on which hen got there. Children who have only ever met eggs in a carton take a moment with it. The loop is short enough to hold in your head all at once: scraps go in, eggs come out, breakfast follows, and the shells go back to the compost.

The loop
Scraps in, eggs out, shells back to the compost
Planting from autumn

A growing season that runs backwards

South Florida grows in the cool half of the year, so the beds go in once the heat breaks in the autumn and the harvest runs through the winter and into spring: kale, chard, collards, lettuce, carrots, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, herbs, and sunflowers that come up wherever last year dropped them. By late spring the beds are pulled and the ground is put under cover to rest through the summer. Learning to work with a season instead of a calendar turns out to be its own kind of Jewish education.

Season
Planting in the autumn, harvesting through spring
Forty-eight and counting

Forty-eight fruit trees, all over the property

Forty-eight fruit trees are now in the ground across the five acres, put there over several seasons by people who mostly did not know each other beforehand. Vegetables are tucked in around them too, in the shade of the tamarind and out among the coconut palms, so that the growing and the trees are not kept in separate places. There is a story in the Talmud about a man who asks an old farmer why he is planting a carob tree he will never eat from, and is told that he found the world full of carob trees planted by the people before him. Planting a tree here is the least abstract way we know to say that.

Planted so far
48 fruit trees across five acres
Families welcome

Garden Days: everyone’s hands in the dirt

Once a month the gate opens, and whoever turns up gets a job. Grandparents, parents, teenagers, toddlers who are mostly there to move soil from one pile to another. Nobody stands at the front and talks. You end up kneeling in the dirt beside someone you have never met, both of you elbow-deep in the same bed, and two hours later you know them properly, which is a thing that almost never happens at a table. Gloves if you have them, spares if you do not, and community service hours for students.

When
Monthly · 11:00am – 1:00pm
Students
Community service hours available
Any time

Walking the land

Five acres, a brick path, bougainvillea, palms, the beds, the hives, the henhouse, and a good deal of sky. People come for a class and stay an extra half hour on the path, which is entirely the intention. Judaism has a blessing for the first time each year you see a tree in blossom, and it is a much easier blessing to mean when you are standing under the tree.

Open
Walk the property whenever you are here

The hives, and the honey coming off them

Filmed on the property. No sound, just the bees getting on with it.

A hive at the quiet edge of the land, on an ordinary afternoon.
Harvest day: the honey comes off the frames and goes into jars.

What the land gives

Eggs, honey, and whatever is readyA box packed off the property: eggplant, peppers, kale, honey from the hives, eggs from the henhouse.
Hands in, straight awayNobody is given a talk first.
An armful of carrotsPulled in the cool of the morning.
The honey comes off the framesJarred, labelled, and set out on a table.
The hive, up closeA quiet colony doing all of the actual work.
Scraps, returnedKitchen trimmings go to the flock and come back as eggs.
Ten minutes out of the groundStill wearing the soil it grew in.
VolunteersSunflowers come up wherever last year dropped them.
Winter kaleLacinato, taller than the bed it is growing in.
Take one homeSeedlings bagged up for people to plant at their own house.
The next crewTwo boys carrying a palm frond to the pile.
Turning a bed overFour people, one bed, a Sunday morning.
They do not mind being heldThe hens are entirely used to us.
Five acres, fenced beds, palmsThe garden from across the lawn.

You cannot hurry a seed, and it turns out you cannot hurry a community either.

Nobody arrives at a Garden Day knowing what they are doing. That is the useful part. There is no level of observance to declare, no Hebrew to read, no background to explain. There is a bed that needs turning and a person on the other side of it who also does not know what they are doing.

Come once, get soil under your fingernails, take home an egg and a bunch of carrots, and see how it sits with you. If it turns out you like it, there is a whole season of it, and forty-eight trees that would appreciate the water.

Coming up

Sunday, January 17, 2027Grow
Garden Day
11:00am – 1:00pm · community service hours available

Come as you are. Belong as you are.

No pressure. No religious prerequisites. No need to know anyone before you arrive.