The owner of Uri Tutim farm says it will take the region’s agriculture a long time to recover, but its very existence is nothing short of a miracle.
“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.