“Let me take you down ’cause I’m going to strawberry fields.” This line from the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” was ringing in my ears as I made my way to Uri Tutim (Uri’s Strawberries) farm in Moshav Yesha near the Gaza border.

The strawberry fields the Beatles sang about were actually a reference to Salvation Army Homes. Meanwhile, I was heading to a farm located in the Western Negev that was among many others that were ravaged by the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.

“Even before October 7, there were rocket hits in our greenhouses; an American woman was killed inside the moshav by a rocket once,” the farm’s owner, Uri Patkin, tells ISRAEL21c.

From high-tech to farming

Patkin, 55, grew up in Yesha, helping his father run the family farm. Eventually he moved to the center of the country, where he worked in high-tech for nearly a decade.

“At the age of 35, I left my job and I told my parents I was coming back to the Negev to become a farmer. My dad told me I was crazy,” he says with a laugh.

“But by that time I was already married and had children. I thought it would be better to raise a family in a moshav than in the city, closer to the land and nature.”

At first, he worked at his father’s prominent flower farm. Shortly afterwards, however, he decided to start cultivating strawberries and business took off.

For years, Uri’s Strawberries exported most of its produce to the biggest supermarket chains in Europe. When it became more financially lucrative for Europeans to import produce from countries like Egypt and Morocco, Patkin didn’t scale back; he just redirected the goods to the local market.

Special technique 

One of the main reasons for Patkin’s success was the introduction of a special growing technique that not many Israeli farms were using at the time: planting in containers or baskets suspended from the top of the greenhouse.

“The results of the method are high-quality berries with a shelf life that’s longer than what is customary for strawberries,” notes Patkin.

Avoiding direct contact with the soil leads to less fungi and mold, requires fewer pesticides and makes picking easier for farm workers.

“We also pluck out the bottom leaves, so that way the strawberry is always ventilated by dry air, free of invaders.”

Although this method requires infrastructure and larger investments per unit area, he says, it also yields much more produce per unit.

‘The worst day of my life’

Patkin says that even before the October 7 attacks, there were constant “rounds of violence” launched by Gaza terrorist groups toward Israel.

“It used to discourage people from coming to work or live here because every few weeks, sometimes every few days, missiles can start falling from the sky,” notes Patkin.

But nothing could have prepared Patkin or other residents of the area for that Black Saturday. “It was the worst day of my life; people were being killed all around me,” he recalls.

Yesha was among the very few communities in the area that managed to fight off the invading terrorists thanks to six members of moshav’s emergency squad. However, five of the six were killed in the fighting: Lior Ben Yaakov, Gil Avital, Itai Nachmias, Tal Maban and Dan Assulin. And as they retreated from the moshav, the surviving terrorists kidnapped or killed foreign workers from Thailand.

“The foreign workers are not part of this conflict between Palestinians and Israel, and they found themselves on the battlefield. I feel a lot of personal responsibility over that,” Patkin tells ISRAEL21c.

Patkin himself was out helping the few IDF soldiers who finally reach the moshav in the afternoon hours.

“I had to accompany the army, while taking care of the dead and the wounded, something I don’t recommend anyone go through in their life,” he says.

A long time for full rehabilitation

By October 8, nearly all Yesha residents were evacuated, except for the replacement emergency squad. A day later, all foreign workers followed.

Patkin was among the few residents who never left the moshav, even when his entire family was evacuated.

“We were ready to give up on agriculture. We thought, ‘At least we’re alive and healthy.’ But three days later, waves upon waves of volunteers from all over the country showed up, telling us they’re here to save agriculture,” Patkin recalls.

He says that for the first three to four months after the attack, agriculture at the moshav was kept going by volunteers, who ultimately saved it.

“Our type of agriculture is intense; it’s not like wheat that you plant and it just grows. Every day you have to do agrotechnical work and supervision.”

Eventually, Israel began recruiting new agricultural workers from around the world to help rehabilitate the region.

“This is what got the farms back on their feet, but still not to the scale they were before October 7,” he says. “I personally revived only about 50% of my farm; it will take a long time for it to fully rehabilitate.”

By now, 90 percent of Yesha residents have come back to the moshav.

Uri Tutim welcomes tourists to visit and pick strawberries by hand for a small admission fee. These visits help support not only the farm, but the entire region that is still hurting from what it endured.

Image - UWI/Strawberries grow at Uri Tutim farm’s greenhouse. (Natalie Selvin)