Last weekend my family attended this amazing retreat in Baltimore, the Beit Midrash at the Pearlstone Center. You can read my article about the retreat in the Jewish Daily Forward here.
I have to say absolutely love pluralistic Jewish events, especially when we get to talk about farming. I have been thinking a lot more about the idea of shmitta, the once in every 7 year sabbatical from farming and I am sure I will be writing more about that soon.
One very compelling piece of shmitta is the idea that if you had to feed your family without any farming, you would be more aware of all of the wild plants available to you. And it would also seem required to teach this plant literacy to your children. I heard that there are some people trying to include a wild edible plant dish in every Shabbat meal as sort of a practice or way of envisioning shmitta. I love that idea of that practice.
Here is some wonderful nutritious chickweed already greening up on our farm in February. It steams down to very little, but it is delicious in salad or soups.
Shmitta and foraging, yes! I’ve got chickweed, henbit, deadnettle, dandelion, bittercress and several other edible yard weeds going at the moment (unassisted), but no salads yet…
I look forward to reading more Lettuce Edge posts about this.