Itamar Hero

Shalom dear friends,

We are Alon and Rachel Zimmerman. And we have been farmers in Itamar for more than 30 years. Rachel was born in Toronto to the Diamont family and made Aliya at the age of 18. Alon was born in California to parents that had strong connections to Israel. They married in Israel and they were one of the founding families of the city of Itamar in the Shomron. Baruch Hashem, they raised a family of 10 children! and established an organic farm for the export and supplying of the local market of vegetables. In 2014 our farm was destroyed by an unusual snow storm of almost a meter of snow. We did not receive any financial assistance from the government and were very close to being financially bankrupt. We gradually picked ourselves up by setting up a small dairy farm with a variety of dairy products, selling every day house to house, including sour dough bread and fresh salads from the farm.

A few years ago, We received and allotment from the government to raise 2,500 egg laying chickens. This became a great opportunity for our farm to become self-sufficient. We decided to put all our efforts in building a very modern chicken coop which is, one hand economically feasible and on the other hand very humane to the chickens. The chicken coop is two stories with the chickens living on the top floor in a clean environment not in cages. The waste falls to the bottom floor and it is periodically collected for farming use. The eggs are collected by a conveyer belt and thus cuts 50 percent of labor costs and 95 percent of the eggs are clean. We have funded, so far, more than 80 percent of the project and need another 30 thousand dollars to finish. Any form of assistance would be greatly appreciated since we have exhausted all other options of financing.

Blessings,
Alon and Rachel Zimmerman
Yeshuv Itamar