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It's a salad! It's like spinach! It's CHICKWEED!

© Barbara Hall

Oh no, she's grazing in the garden again. Actually, when it comes to chickweed hunts in the dead of winter, you can do your grazing in your potted plants!

Chickweed was the first weed I learned to eat. When I apprenticed with Susun Weed, we five intrepid herbalists were nicknamed "The Snow Weasels" as virtually our entire apprenticeship was spent chopping firewood and shoveling snow. Our six week course ran from March 8th to April 19th and Susun has never ventured to have a group of apprentices that early in the year again. Not much plant identification was getting done under feet and feet of snow.

But Susun had a rather makeshift greenhouse that housed some rosemary plants, some kale, some sleeping wild ginger and QUITE the assortment of odd weeds.

CHICKWEED. Who would have thought? Susun brought us into the greenhouse for a morning class and pinched off shoots for each of us to study. As she told us of its amazing properties, she invited us to hold our chickweed shoots up to the light and turn them around in our fingers until we could see the minute silky hairs on just one side of the stem. Unmistakable. There they were. While there are plenty of scurrying little ground-hugging plants that will hang out with the chickweed, this is a totally fool-proof way to make sure you have the right plant. This is rather important when you're out grazing on wild things. Mistake a foxglove leaf for a comfrey leaf and you can kiss your heart goodbye. But chickweed is a cinch.

I can sum up most of our learnings at Susun's: You looked carefully, then you popped it in your mouth. WOW. This crazy little weed that I had torn out of vegetable gardens by the absolute ARMLOAD tasted like the greatest raw spinach ever! It was just so GREEN and ALIVE tasting. Well, there in the snowdrifts we got SO starved for live green goodies that we began to scalp her houseplants if they were sporting even the tiniest sprigs of chickweed. When there was no more than a handful to be had, we reverently sprinkled it ONTO the salad and made sure everyone got some. It's one of the few weeds you can happily make an entire salad of on its own.

So, OK, it's green... So is lettuce. Ah Hah, squirrels, come with me........let's check out what you all are calling a weed.

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