We are still considering Shmita on the farm, and with Shmita two years away (beginning on Rosh HaShanah 2014) we have a little more time to plan than we previously thought.

Which means, we get to expand our list of edibles that we’ll be putting in, and deepen our plans! It also means that some of my plans for fall sown greens for the following spring won’t work, and that goes for garlic (which is put in in November) as well.

That being said, we wanted to share some resources for anybody looking into Shmita-izing their projects with perennial vegetables by discussing our favorite North American friendly perennial favorites.

Asparagus – plant it this coming spring to harvest by Shmita 2014.

Horseradish – not strictly a vegetable, but still it’ll be great for Passover.

Ground Cherry – these will come back year after year and are so delicious. This is a self-seeding annual.

Strawberries – yes.

Rhubarb – careful with these, the stalks are delicious, but the leaves are always poisonous (after a certain date, you should avoid the stem, too. This is a spring-time vegetable.)

Daylily buds – these are so good, it will be hard not to eat them all (and if you do, you won’t get any beautiful flowers)

Jerusalem artichoke – plant these somewhere where it’s ok if they spread like crazy (some kind of grassy island surrounded by cement might be best), and then harvest the tubers year after year.

Welsh Onions – a perennial bunching onion variety that can be ordered from Oikos (see below).

Wine Cap Mushroom – these edible fungi can be inoculated into the straw or wood chip mulch in your garden, and provide a perennial harvest.

Sea Kale – according to Restoration Seeds, this one takes two years to come to maturity, but is a good substitute for collards and kale. And, it’s perennial.

Dock – a perennial alternative to swiss chard / spinach. Haven’t tried it yet, but it’s a definite on my list.

Broad-Leaf French Sorrel – another leafy choice, apparently it’s a spreader, so it’s best to put it somewhere it can roam. As it grows in part shade where little else does, this shouldn’t be too tricky. (Sorrel does contain oxalic acid, similarly to spinach, so eat in moderation)

Egyptian Walking Onion – plants itself!

Burdock Root – These grow wild, but you can plant them, too. They are common in Asian groceries.

Dandelion Root & Leaf & Flower – The roots make a delicious tea, can be added to soups, and the leaves (although very bitter) are quite good for you. Make sure you get these from a lawn that has not been treated from pesticides!

Red Clover Flowers – these are sweat and yummy, and make a beautiful salad topper.

These are just a few of the plants we are thinking of putting in our Shmita garden. In the way that the first couple could harvest from Gan Eden, so may we too with our own permaculture landscapes! The following websites offer great information (and seeds) for those looking for more information on perennial plants: Oikos Nursery & Restoration Seeds

Shmita – Release

" Shmita is the Biblically mandated ‘Sabbatical Year’ of rest and release, when agriculture and commerce were simultaneously re-adjusted to enable a more equitable, just and healthy society, economy and environment. During this period of time, debts would be forgiven, agricultural land would lie fallow, private land holdings would become open to the commons, and staples such as food storage and perennial harvests would be redistributed and accessible to all. The central message is that the Shmita paradigm structured all economic and agricultural activity so that it served the wellbeing of citizens and society, not the other way around."

From Hazon at: http://www.hazon.org/resource/shmita-project/

The above was taken from Hazon's page on Shmita, and the full page can be read here. Hazon is a wonderful, international Jewish food & sustainability organization, and they offer a tremendous amount of resources online, plus wonderful experiences like the Hazon Food Conference, which the farm attended and presented at this December. Visit their page to learn more about the Shmita year, and maybe sign up for one of their cross country bike rides while you're at it. 

In preparing for the Shmita, we are laying the foundation for an Edenic world

The Shmita year has the possibility of being one of the most revolutionary and profoundly Jewish ethical experiences because it serves as a foundation to synthesize so many of the values that we hold as important in our daily life. It has the transformative power of turning these values, which we aspire to, into real direct action that can change our mind frame, our relationship to the earth, and our relationship to each other.

Shmita, like Shabbat, has the power to be a consciousness changing experience. It presents us with an opportunity to change our acquisitional mind-frame, and to experience peace. We invite you to join us as we begin our preparations for Shmita, 2014, on our farm. Although we’ve started late (it’s the 6th year already!) and we’re not in Israel, we think that the project has so many important aspects that we’re opting in to see what we can accomplish.

Shmita means, among many things, a commitment to the earth. It also means, by virtue of the sabbatical year, a commitment to learning, connecting with others, and treating ourselves with care. The list of preparations below taken wholly illuminates some of the ways in which observing and preparing for Shmita could enable us to see ourselves and our relationship to the earth in a new light.

A switch to more Shmita like thinking might help us to combat global climate change, social injustice, and hunger issues. The cultural implications are dramatic and far reaching. 

Preparing for Shmita on the farm could look like:

Increasing the practice of cultivating perennial food producing gardens, and eating wild foods

• Planting and tending perennial edibles gardens
• Planting fruits,  nuts and berry bushes to prepare for the Shmita to come
• Learn about and practice foraging
• Set up perennial food sources for our animals to eat

Experimenting with planting the year before:  

• Carrots, beets, garlic, melons
• Dump heaps (a method of piling up old melons, etc. and seeing what grows next year)
• Volunteer encouragement (covering seeds from tomatoes that happen to be on the ground with soil
• Fall seeding lettuce, spinach, arugula, kale, turnips, radishes, peas, etc.
• Covering fall seeded crops in winter
• Fertilizing the soil in fall with manure, and other sources of nutrition

Increase our awareness of, and commitment to, the health of the land and the plants and animals that live on it.

• By exploring long-term fertility experiments
• By exploring our relationship to land, plants, and animals through text study and discussion.
• By spending more time in nature, observing and participating rather than extracting

Plan, plant, harvest, and then dry, freeze, sauce, can, pickle, and generally put up crops grown in 2013 for consumption in 2014.

• Grow extra root crops for preserving, canning, pickling, etc.
• Grow winter crops with excellent storage, such as butternut squash and certain types of onions, garlic, peanuts, sweet potatoes, etc.
• Build a large array of solar dehydrators on the field to create a steady stream of dried tomato, tomatillo, ground cherry, pepper, eggplant, kale chips, and others.

Prepare spiritually with a Shmita Chevurah, which meets regularly to explore the meaning of Shmita.

• Discuss relevant: texts, films, and outside organizations
• Learn to preserve food, and prepare those crops there will be an abundance of during the Shmita year.

Learn about and conduct outreach on Food Justice issues, including the Farm Bill.

• Through petitions
• Through workshops
• Through partnering with other organizations
• Through making resources available.  

The above list is one that we came up with as realistic possibilities for Pushing the Envelope Farm. Just putting it together made me consider the project that we work on in a new way, and many of the things on the list are things we've been thinking about doing for a long time. When put in the context of Shmita, seeing all of them together makes their value more apparent. 

Kate and Elan, Pushing the Envelope Farm

Thanksgiving and the Harvest

At Thanksgiving we celebrate the abundance of the harvest, the end of the agricultural season and the entering of the winter cycle. During the previous summer, we’ve worked in partnership with the land to yield abundance before a season of scarcity.

For many of us, the harvest will come from our gardens, as well as our agricultural fields. But what does a partnership with the land really mean, at its best?

Thanksgiving is celebrated as a day of a meeting of cultures, between Native American and Europeans.  In this light,we thought it might be interesting to look at pre-European land management practices as they relate to stewardship and being guardians of the earth.

Tending and Tilling the Native American Way

When the first European settlers arrived in North America, they likely thought they were looking upon open, wild land. It has since, however, come to be understood that the land was already being managed by the Native Americans who lived here.

While the American ethic of land management tends to be that wild spaces should be left wild, and cultivated places should be cultivated, the management of whole tracks of land by the Native Americans was more a mixture of the two.

For example, we can look at selective burning, where large areas of prairie but also forest were burned to remove underbrush and to make the forest more park like. Early European settlers compared the appearance of American forests to their parks of large trees that touched canopy to canopy with open space underneath. While this practice certainly made the forests more attractive for humans, it also aided other wild species.

Prescribed burns actually assist in building wild life abundance through creating flushes of food for a wide variety of creatures. Many animals and plants rely on a certain stage of development in the forest to thrive, and natural as well as prescribed burns are one way of ensuring this state. Forest burns were similar to prairie burns, which helped to favor the grasses and plants that could support large populations of game.

Native cultures also practiced seed saving, selective plant breeding, and wild gardening. For example, the pawpaw tree, America’s largest native fruit, was thought to be planted throughout a wide variety of areas.

In the practices described above, an intimate knowledge of several aspects of nature would be utilized into making a management choice that could benefit people, animals, and the ecosystem as a whole. And so a sense of place in working with the land is important to create the successes that we depend on.

Food for Thought

So for this Thanksgiving Day, I will be thankful not only for the food and family in front of me, but also for the thousands of years of collaboration between people, plants, and animals that made the array of food before me possible.

I will also make a commitment to trying to pay more attention to those aspects of nature which may not be able to take care of themselves, or that could flourish with better management, and try to concentrate more on my tending as well as my tilling.

Happy Holidays,

The Farm Team at Pushing the Envelope

And God said: "Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree that has seed-yielding fruit — to you it shall be for food."   Gen. 1:29

This month at the farm, we've been thinking a lot about what it means to be food independent. There was a talk at the Great Lakes Bioneers by Dr. Vandana Shiva. She’s a remarkable woman who has received the alternate Noble Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award) and the award that caught my attention, a Lennon ONO grant for peace. The below is from the promo for the talk:

The following is directly from the JUF's website. You can also skip the story and just click here to give. 100% of the donations go directly to help those in need as the JUF is taking nothing out for administrative costs. 

"Jewish Federation opens fund for Hurricane Sandy relief

The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago is accepting donations to help those impacted by the devastation of Hurricane Sandy and its related storms along the Eastern seaboard.

"Millions are being affected by these storms and their associated widespread damage," said Federation President Steven Nasatir. "Chicago's Jewish community is ready to respond, as we have so often in the past, to provide support to those most in need."

Chicagoans may contribute online at www.juf.org/relief, by calling (312) 444-2869, or by sending a check to the Jewish Federation Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund, Room 3022, 30 S. Wells St., Chicago, IL 60606.

All funds collected by the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago will be directed to social welfare agencies in the affected areas serving both the Jewish and general communities. The Chicago Federation will absorb all administrative costs, ensuring that 100% of all donations go directly to aid those most grievously affected. 

The Jewish Federations of North America is conducting an initial damage and recovery survey with every federation from Virginia to New England. Damage assessment continues at the local level through contacts with federations, agencies, and our Jewish communal partners through the Jewish Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster (JVOAD) partnership. We are also actively participating in the National VOAD partnership, which convenes national and local disaster relief agencies with FEMA and state emergency management agencies.

The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago and Federations across North America have a long track record of caring for victims of global natural disasters. Last year, Jewish Federations raised funds for those affected by widespread storms around the U.S., and more than $1 million for victims of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan. Donors to Chicago's Jewish Federation Earthquake Relief Fund provided some $725,000 to assist Haitians in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake there in 2010.