I gave two really great lectures last week - one on the history of Zionism, from the late 1800s to the partition of Israel in 1947. And the other on Women in Contemporary Judaism. Both of them involved huge learning curves for me, but I was really pleased with the results, and felt very confident with the teaching - I had read a lot and knew the topics well. Do you know there are over 10,000 women (mostly in Israel) today who are unable to get a divorce because their husbands either won't grant one, or have simply disappeared. Jewish Orthodox law.

The week before we had no classes, since I was asking the students to watch Schindlers List - a long movie to say the least. Four of the seven students were able to come out here to watch it on Friday afternoon - I had wanted them to watch it together so that we could talk about it as we were watching it - and that worked out well. And two of them stayed for Friday evening dinner and had a great time. And when they left, both students said "I know you won't be teaching us after this semester, but could we please come out here again?"

We invite people for dinner nearly every Friday and some or all of our family come too. That means we can have anywhere from 8 to 14 sit down to dinner. It's become such a lovely thing to do. I bake challah every Friday - practically with my eyes closed these days - and they demolish it! Though I say it myself, it's some of the best bread I've ever tasted. And, great Jewish mother that I am, I'm teaching Nataw to bake challah!

Nataw has been spending a lot of time at home lately and we love having her here - she is good natured, fun, and a delightful companion to me (and able contributor) working in the garden.

Last weekend the local organic farmers in a radius of about 50 miles opened their farms to the public in a "Farm Tour" - we visited 9 or 10 farms in 2 afternoons and learned lots of valuable things, made some good connections, and came home with a new hen.

Our guineas have been madly laying eggs for the last month. They've made communal nests in two corners of the chook house, sharing with the chickens of course - but there's a problem. No one is taking ownership of the eggs and sitting on them. We've heard that guineas are poor mothers and they're proving the rule. So at the last farm we visited on Sunday, there were some 75 hens laying eggs. And the farmer happened to mention that two of them had gone broody - that means that they stop laying and start sitting. I asked if he'd sell her to us and he said, well no, but he'd loan her. So we promptly went out and got her off the nest, tucked her under Paul's arm, and drove home. By the next morning, she had installed herself on one of the nests, and quite happily shoved in the extra ones we put near her. Mrs. Buffy is now sitting on 25 guinea eggs. And we are thrilled to think that we will be the parents of our very own keets (guinea chicks).