Getting Ready for Passover
Horseradish root from the garden
Passover starts tonight, and we are spending the morning getting ready to host our annual Ten Apple Farm Seder. Passover is one of our favorite holidays — so many fantastic food traditions and symbolism of freedom and spring, which for us is always what starting a new season on the farm is all about. I spent the morning digging up horseradish root from the garden to make our homemade maror for the seder. (Maror is the traditional bitter herb that is eaten on Passover to symbolize the bitterness of the lives of the slaves in Egypt before the exodus).
We planted some horseradish roots three years ago, with the hope of making our own maror for Passover, but they didn’t take. Two years ago we planted some crowns, and they took off like gangbusters. Horseradish is one of those roots that if you dig it up, you better be sure you got every last tendril, or else you’ll find it coming back and multiplying and spreading like crazy. What you see above is what came back after we thought we had dug up one entire plant last year. At least they’ll be no shortage of maror at the seder tonight. Happy Passover and Easter everyone!
My goats ate the horseradish in my garden. I planted it outside of the fenced area – thinking it would spread and I wanted it to have space and not invade my vegetable beds. I didn’t think that two pet goats could do the whole patch in, but they did. Happy Pesach!
–Terry at HenCam.com
Have you dug around to look for the roots, Terry? They might still be under there. Our sheep ate one of our patches last summer–we considered it “self seasoning”–but it’s all starting to come back. Happy Pesach!