The Haystack Farm

Al-Faqa is a village on the border of the Emirate of Dubai and the Eastern Region of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, located on the Dubai – Al Ain highway. The village straddles the border between the two emirates. It has a police station and a population of less than 1,000 residents.

Myself and my photographer friend got to learn of the Haystack Farm and decided to do a roadtrip. Armed with our camera gear, we set off just before the crack of dawn in the hope of reaching there before sunrise, but there was only one problem, we knew the area the farm was in, but did not know it's exact location.

We managed to reach the area of Al-Faqa before sunrise and decided to drive around in the hope of finding the farm. We stopped in various locations to ask the local expats about the farm, who themselves didn't have a clue. We were about to give up after driving around for for almost two hours and and return back to Dubai, until we decided to give one last area a try. And there it was!!

We had finally found the Haystack Farm. We drove in and introduced ourselves. The owners and farm workers were very welcoming and hospitable. The farm was a family run business, by a Pakistani expatriate and had ran it for the last 35 years. The owner explained that the usually hay arrived from the Indian subcontinent. The Pakistani workers woke up everyday at the crack of dawn to start the preperation of the hay into bales which was then distributed to local farms around the region.