Pennypack Farm
Tuesday, August 18

This farm is a charitable, non-profit educational organization dedicated to making sustainable agriculture an important part of our community, through farming, education, and community events. And the grounds are full of wild foods, growing side-by-side with food crops.

This is a great time of year for berries. We'll be looking for familiar wild blackberries, much better-tasting than any commercial varieties, and common elderberries, less known but great in jams, muffins, and pancakes. Black cherries, a native species with a flavor of cherry and grapefruit, may also bear abundant fruit. And we may even find lemony mayapples.

Summer herbs and greens will be growing in great abundance. We'll be looking for spinach-flavored lamb's-quarters, succulent purslane, mild-flavored lady's thumb, green bean-flavored Asiatic dayflower, sour wood sorrel, and spicy poor man's pepper. Chopped, mixed, and dressed, they'll make the best-tasting, most nutritious summer salad ever.

Seeds are also in season. Soft, chewy garlic mustard seeds taste hot, with garlic overtones. Foxtail grass seeds are crunchy. Jewelweed seeds taste like walnuts.

We'll also find medicinal plants such as mullein, good for coughs; jewelweed, a poison ivy preventative that cures mosquito bites and soothes all skin irritations; and sassafras, a tonic that's the original basis of root beer.