Bustan Qaraaqa: British Expats Getting Dirty

I'm writing my geography Master's thesis on traditional Palestinian agriculture, and on Tuesday I went to two farms for some fieldwork. The first one was in the village of Wadi Fuqin, southwest of Jerusalem. I wrote up that visit at GreenProphet.com.

The second one was a British experimental farm called Bustan Qaraaqa (Tortoise Garden), which is southeast of Jerusalem next to the village of Beit Sahour. If Wadi Fuqin is a centuries-old village full of locals, Bustan Qaraqaa has been around for a year, was started by British land lovers and is worked by foreign volunteers who blow in and out for a few days at a time, farming by day and by night sleeping inside the 100-year-old stone house that is the project's headquarters.


I went touring with my friend Anthony, who is launching an English-language program at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem and is looking for ecologists to be professors. We met for coffee in a classy joint in West Jerusalem, then called up Alice at Bustan Qaraqaa and followed her directions to the farm.

From Hebron road in West Jerusalem, we took an Arab bus #124, which dropped us at the Gilo checkpoint south of Jerusalem. We got out and went through a turnstyle where a guard checked our IDs and waved us through. From there we traversed a metal maze and emerged, Alice in Wonderland style, on the other side of the mirror where a clump of yellow taxis stalled, their drivers shouting "Taxi! Taxi!"

The metal maze that leads from Israeli-controled Gilo checkpoint to Palestinian Bethlehem on the other side.

We wound up paying Nayef 30 shekels to get to Bustan Qaraqaa, about 7 kilometers away. He dropped us at a tall stone house with three cases of Taybeh Beer on the front step. We went inside and started talking shop with Alice over fenugreek cake.

For a complete history of the place, see the GreenProphet post or the Guardian article.

Alice, 28, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the region's plants, and of the ecological issues facing West Bank farmers, which she dispenses with starts and giggles and ironic interjections. She said she came to Israel/Palestine originally to keep her friend company, and started by working at the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem and other ecological groups. However, she soon realized she would rather actively work the soil rather than writing reports on it, and she and four other friends rented a stone house and the grounds around it from a Palestinian man for 3,000 shekels a month.


Alice checks some of the 1,000 local and foreign tree seedlings growing on one of the terraces.

There, they implement local and foreign techniques to coax the most out of the soil without use of pesticides and fertilizers. I was most impressed with how although Bustan Qaraaqa's founders are well-educated British expats, they approach their work through the eyes of a cash-strapped Palestinian villager. Farming methods are time-intensive but low-technology and low-cost.

When they first started farming, Bustan Qaraaqa's staff painstakingly marked out the contours of the land using a water-level. Two people walked the grounds, each holding a pole attached to a plastic pipe filled with water that stretched between them. When they were on ground of equal height, the water didn't fall out of the pipe.

Along these contour lines, Alice and the crew dug swales, which trap water going downhill and help use it for plants rather than allowing it to flow downhill, taking the topsoil with it.


Melons are planted in a mound, at the center of which is an upside-down plastic bottle with its bottom cut off. This allows for irrigating the roots of the plants. The water doesn't burn the melons' delicate leaves this way, and it also is slower to evaporate.


The swirling dirt and stones help maximize water use. Alice said she will plant a tree at the center of the swirl and smaller plants on the higher parts of the outside. This way, water gets to the plants first and concentrates at the roots of the tree, which eventually grows to shade the plants around it.

A recently completed project is the rainwater storage tank. This was dug out of cinderblock and painted over with waterproof paint. Alice said three big winter storms could fill it, and provide enough water for irrigating crops over the summer. She plans to fill it with tilapia to prevent the water from going bad, and to cover it with thatch to forestall evaporation. Alice said of the paint, "It's not environmentally friendly, but it's more environmentally friendly than letting all the rainwater get away."

Alice and Anthony sit on the reservoir's edge, with the farmland stretching behind them.

The house has no fridge, a situation poorer farmers off the electric grid might sympathize with. The running water used in the house gets filtered and reused for irrigating the fields. No water is used for the compost toilet.


The toilet, which stinks a bit but whose stone room is lined with quotes from Jack Kerouac and Mark Twain, as well as T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in its entirety.


One of two "refrigerators," created by nesting two pottery urns and keeping sand, water and zaatar (to repel insects) in between.


The kitchen's pastry brush is a palm frond.


Bustan Qaraaqa saves beer bottles as building materials; here is an international collection of the local Taybeh Beer as well as the Israeli Macabbi brew.

While we were there, we saw the close relationship between Bustan Qaraaqa and its neighbors. One woman came to pick weeds like hubeiza, which can be eaten in a salad. The neighbor took his goats out to pasture; Alice said Bustan Qaraaqa buys goats for meat when they have money. A little girl walked along the stone wall along the edge of the property and said hello.

Alice said she hopes to turn over the farm to a Palestinian in five years. In the meantime, Bustan Qaraaqa has established connections with farmers at the village of Wallaje, where each Friday volunteers go to help in some way. The latest project is building a compost toilet there.