First, before anything else: thank you. Your generosity has carried this project through challenges that would have stopped most efforts cold. You stayed with us, and that means everything. This update is our way of honoring that trust, with honesty and with genuine excitement about what is coming.
The Vision You Helped Plant
In 2022, Israel365 partnered with Baruch Kogan, an Israeli farmer, permaculture expert, and IDF reservist, to plant 10,000 trees on a bare, sun-scorched plot in Ayyir Hashachar, a young Jewish community putting down roots in the heartland of Israel. The goal was a living forest that would hold water, produce food, shelter wildlife, and seed natural reforestation across the surrounding land for generations to come.
Your donations made it possible. Your generosity fenced the land, rebuilt the soil, put in the irrigation system, and planted thousands of trees.
Then October 7th happened. Baruch went to Gaza. The water supply collapsed. Your support rebuilt it, stronger and more permanent than before.
Early Signs — And What They Mean
Even before the new planting phase began, the land was already responding. Hundreds of Washingtonia palm seedlings came up in the forest plot, evidence that the deep mulch layer was retaining moisture in soil that would otherwise bake dry. Mycelial networks spread beneath the surface and mushroom fruiting bodies appeared throughout the plot, something entirely absent from the surrounding deforested land. The soil came alive, building itself from the inside out.
Where Things Stand Today
The plot has not yet shown new visible growth above ground. Water pressure from the rebuilt supply line may still fall short of what new seedlings need. Baruch now builds a water tower on site that will deliver consistent, reliable pressure across all 10,000 irrigation drippers. That work is underway.
This is the permanent fix. And while it goes up, Baruch has not stopped for a single day.
What Is Growing Right Now
In his nursery beds, under daily mist irrigation, 1,500 young trees grow right now. Fig cuttings have already rooted. Almond seedlings shoot upward. Tabor oak comes up from acorns. Mulberry and black locust cuttings leaf out daily. Every one of them goes into the ground the moment the first October rain falls, roots already strong enough to carry them through next summer.
Alongside them, Baruch gathers and prepares seeds for direct planting across the full plot: black wattle, mesquite, black locust, tipuana, Tabor oak, moringa, and more. He cold-stratifies walnuts and pecans now. The almonds he cold-stratified this spring came up strong, proof the method works.
This forest is not behind. It is being built the right way.
You Are Part of Something Lasting
The nursery beds exist because of you. The water tower rising on that hillside exists because of you. Every tree that takes root here pushes back against centuries of desolation and pulls this land closer to what the prophets dreamed: a living, fruitful Israel, green and abundant, rooted in the real heartland of the Jewish people. None of that happens without the people who believed in it.
October is coming. The trees are ready.
If you’d like to keep this forest growing, there is no better moment than right now to donate, before the October planting.