Project from above, featuring a garbage-accumulating fence edge Well, you would be hard pressed to find a tougher block of land -- a 400m below sea level, West facing slope, in an extremely hot, arid climate, with extremely poor, shallow highly alkaline top 'soil', covered in rocks, with a limited water supply and in a mostly Palestinian refugee-populated village. When we first started working on the site local farmers thought it was just ridiculous to even try to produce any kind of result on … [Read more...]
Letters from Jordan: ‘Greening the Desert – the Sequel’ Site Contrasts Against Jordan Insanities
Staring into the eyes of the future of Jordan, one wonders how things could be.... All Photographs © Craig Mackintosh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYk21PLKGgg Al Jazeera's very recent feature of the new 'Greening the Desert' site Introduction Why did the photojournalist cross the road? It sounds like the beginning of a joke, and, in a way, it was. I was standing at a busy road in Amman, Jordan, contemplating crossing. I say 'contemplating' as there were three lanes in each direction, and … [Read more...]
Update on the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project (aka ‘Greening the Desert, the Sequel’): “Leave All Expectations Behind”
I felt fully prepared leaving for Jordan three weeks ago. Equipped with a 55ltr backpack laden with books, a compost thermometer, a dumpy level as hand luggage and a few well chosen words of advice from former patrons of the land: "Leave all expectations behind". In fact, as i remember correctly, it was to "flush them down the toilet". Within hours of my arrival it became rapidly apparent that would become the most useful thing I was to bring with me, or rather didn't bring, as the case may be. … [Read more...]