During last summer's Lebanon war, when Katyushas were falling on the lower Galilee, Hiroy Amara, director of the Jewish National Fund's Golani nursery, first made sure his workers were safe. Then he started worrying about the saplings.

When Amara saw the smoke rising over the forests and learned of all the forest fires, he knew his work was cut out for him. The nursery, which supplies the JNF's northern district with all its saplings, prepared some 150,000 after the war - the same amount it prepared in all of the previous year.

"We can recruit personnel and order the equipment, but the main problem is reaching the final product - a ten-month-old sapling - in four months," says Aviv Eisenband, director of the JNF's seeds and nurseries.

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Eisenband and his staff brought a large quantity of seeds to the Golani nursery for sprouting. The seeds are produced from fruit gathered in the forests. The workers harvest fruit from some 300 tree species, using ropes to climb tall trees if necessary.

Preparing the seeds requires simulating natural conditions. Some go through an acid bath to simulate passing through a bird's stomach.

"A week after the war, I already had all the seeds," says Amara.

He knew he had to use the best quality substrate beds and grow the saplings in trays, rather than in plastic bags.

"In plastic bags, the plant becomes root-bound. The advantage of sprouting trays is that the roots grow downward and to the sides," says Haim Katz, the JNF's community and forest coordinator in the lower Galilee.

To accelerate the seedlings' growth, the workers exposed them to light at night. Everyone worked frantically to sprout and grow tens of thousands of seedlings to replace the burnt forests.

Eisenband says that in addition to the pine trees so prevalent in the north, this year they intend to plant numerous olive, carob, fig, almond, pomegranate, pistacia and oak trees.

On Tuesday, when the trays of saplings were loaded onto trucks on their way to the Lower Galilee, Amara stood by bursting with pride, but concerned as well.

"When you grow the saplings from nothing, the nursery is their home and I'm the father. They're my children," he says.

Amara immigrated from Ethiopia 16 years ago and graduated from the Agriculture Academy in Kiev, Ukraine.

"Fortunately for me, the JNF then opened a course for new immigrants with academic degrees. There were 24 in the group, all immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Russian speakers. For a long time they didn't realize I spoke their language," he said.

At the end of the course, in 1993, he started working for the JNF.

Six years ago, he was appointed manager of the Golani nursery.

In a few days, when the planting season is over, Amara's nursery will be almost empty, waiting for new seeds to sprout and a calmer summer, when the routine means spraying and watering potted plants.