Ami's Garden
 Ami wanted to be a farmer, just like all the grown-ups on his kibbutz. It was a new kibbutz, and they could certainly use all the help they could get, and besides, Ami was the only child on the kibbutz, so he had no one to play with. His parents didn’t understand this, though. “You’re too young,” they said, “maybe in a few more years. Until then there are plenty of chores for you.”
One day, as Ami finished feeding the chickens, he noticed that he still had some grain left over. “Why don’t I take this grain and plant my own field, where nobody can see it,” he thought. In a few minutes he was in his secret place, a little valley not far from the kibbutz. Using a stick, he dug a furrow and placed the seeds inside. Then he watered his plants, with the water in his canteen.
That night at dinner, everyone ate watermelon. Ami saved his seeds so that he could plant them. In fact, almost every day he planted something new, and his garden was beginning to grow. Of course, he told no one about it. He wanted to wait until just before Shavuot, when everything could be harvested. Only now the grown-ups were so busy with their own crops that no one had time for Ami. “Oh well,” he thought, “I’ll surprise everyone during bikurim.”
Two days before Shavuot, Ami smelled smoke coming from the direction of the fields. Soon he heard shouting, too. A brush fire had broken out and was burning up all the crops. By the time he got there to help put the fire out, it was too late. All the crops were destroyed.
The next morning, the kibbutz held a meeting. “Tomorrow is Shavuot,” Ami’s father began, “and we were hoping to bring bikurim from our own crops. Unfortunately, the fire destroyed everything, and it will take a long time before we will have any produce of our own.”
Ami suddenly jumped up. “But we do have crops, Abba.” Everyone stared at him. “I grew them myself. When you told me I was too young to work in the fields, I planted my own garden.”
Ami’s father took his hand. “Do you want to take us there, Ami?”
“Yes, Abba,” and he led the whole kibbutz to his secret place. Nobody could believe what they saw. There were tomatoes, watermelons, eggplants, cucumbers, and even a little patch of wheat, all ready to be harvested.
The next day the kibbutz invited all the neighboring kibbutzim to come see their bikurim parade. Everyone dressed in their best clothes and carried baskets filled with crops from Ami’s little garden. At the head of the parade was Ami, of course. After all, he had grown everything himself.
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