Shomera saved!

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Some S words for ABC Wednesday

Such heavy rains we had for four consecutive days in February that the shomera collapsed!
Such a sorry sight.
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The shomera stood for who knows how many years or centuries, but the unusual force and amount of rain water brought it down.
It is on the main street of my moshav (agricultural village), right next to the Founders Museum (atop which you saw the sirens in yesterdays post).

But the shomera was salvaged! See?

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Two no-longer-young Arab men, who still know the old ways of building with fieldstones, came and worked hard for several days.

This time, just to be sure, they enclosed the whole structure in chicken wire, the better to hold it together during whatever disaster comes next.
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All around us in the Hills of Jerusalem/Mountains of Judea you find remains of shomerot.

Most are corbelled stone huts with a dome roof.

Some are ancient, but they are hard to date.

Apparently farmers would use them to store their tools and their harvested produce and they would sleep there to guard everything before taking stuff home or to the market.

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In our village, founded in 1950, the shomera was used as a watchtower.

I've heard that at least three of the pioneering new immigrant residents were killed by infiltrators in the early days of our isolated moshav.

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I am still searching for a name in English for shomera.

Maybe you know?

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Today I found a reference and will try to find this publication:
Z. Ron, The Watchman’s Hut as an Expression of Hilltop Farming in the Mountains of Judea and Samaria, Tel Aviv, 1976.

Perhaps this "watchman's hut" is the English term for shomera.

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Shalom!

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