Places to visit in Kfar Yehoshua
Kfar Yehoshua Wild Plant Collection Course, February 13, 2020
A walk through the fields with Mr. Barak Sagi in Kfar Yehoshua turns into a quiet masterclass in wild gathering. Our first stop was Iris Ben-Zvi’s organic farm, where the soil itself feels like a guide. Sorrel, Galium aparine, Lamium amplexicaule, wild beet, green arum, Chenopodium murale, and bright, lemony Oxalis — each plant adding its own note to the early-season palette, and all of them reminding how alive the landscape becomes when you know where to look.
An organic farm is a place where wild plants thrive almost effortlessly, and marigold — or calendula — is one of its quiet treasures. Its gentle healing touch: the flowers are left to infuse in olive or almond oil for about three weeks, turning the mixture into a soft, fragrant remedy. From it, you can even prepare a soothing ointment. The only rule is to store it in a bottle kept away from direct sunlight, letting the plant’s warmth stay intact.
Stellaria — the little “asterisk” we’ve already met — is a surprisingly delicious plant once you learn to recognise it. Its stem is round rather than square, the leaves grow in opposite pairs, and at the very tip there’s a fine, sharp point. Inside the stem runs a thin thread, the signature trait of the whole group, and tiny hairs along the stalk give it another unmistakable mark. It slips beautifully into fruit shakes, adding a fresh, green note. Its name, fittingly, comes from the Latin *Stellaria* — a quiet reminder of its star-like elegance.
Galium aparine carries tiny bristles along its leaves — a plant not meant for eating, but valued for its gentle medicinal qualities. It supports lymph drainage, works as a mild diuretic, and finds its place in simple herbal teas.
Lamium amplexicaule, on the other hand, is entirely edible. Its small flowers make delicate decorations for dishes, while the leaves, stems, and blossoms share a light sweetness with a hint of something savory, almost like a wild echo of celery. You can enjoy the young shoots raw or cook them for a softer, mellow flavor.
The fleshy leaves of this plant are a sure sign that it is wild beets. From it, the beets were domesticated. It's a wild beet. This plant also has the nickname "wild spinach." Today we will make cookies stuffed with beet bar. Leaf structure is a rhombus. The leaf is crisp. The taste is fantastic. Its root is etched white like parsley. The name "spinach" is a misnomer; it comes from a biblical name. Mentioned in the Bib, a plant called tardine has nothing to do with spinach and beets. Root is also edible. Fleshy, shi leaves immediately reveal this plant as a wild beet — the ancient ancestor from which our cultivated beets were domesticated. Over the years, it picked up the mistaken nic"name “wild sp"nach,” though it has nothing to do with spinach at all. Today, it has become the star of our stuffed cookies. Its leaves are rhombus-shaped, crisp, and full of clean, vivid flavour. The root is pale and tapered, reminiscent of parsley, and just as edible. The confusion "with “s"inach” traces back to a biblical term, *tardine*, a name that in fact has no connection to either spinach or beet — slight linguistic detour on a plant with a long, honest lineage.
Fringed rue was planted here for a simple, graceful purpose: to draw butterflies in.
Green arum (Arum hygrophilum) is a geophyte with a tuber, and by nature it’s a poisonous plant, carrying crystalline calcium oxalate that can sharply irritate the throat. Yet it holds a long-standing place in traditional Arabic cooking. The way to make it safe is patience: the leaves are cut, the central vein — where most of the toxins concentrate — is removed, and the greens are boiled for a long time with red sorrel. Sorrel neutralizes the oxalates, and the right balance is simple: one to one. Only after this slow treatment does the plant reveal the deep, earthy flavor behind its dangerous first impression.
Chenopodium murale is a plant you can harvest through every season, though its real value lies in its seeds. It’s a close relative of quinoa, sharing the same botanical lineage. The leaves contain saponin, which makes them unsuitable for eating raw — the substance foams in water much like soap. Because of that, the plant can even serve as a natural cleanser, a quiet reminder of how many uses wild herbs once held.
Sorrel is one of the easiest plants to recognize: its rippled, slightly wavy leaves form a neat rosette at the base. Within about twenty minutes after picking, the leaves lose their firmness and soften completely, turning limp like a small green cloth — a reminder of how quickly wild plants return to their natural tenderness.
Oxalis is instantly recognizable: three clover-like leaflets meeting at a single point. Its stem carries a natural sourness that works beautifully in broths, adding a bright, sharp note. The leaves themselves aren’t used for food — the plant’s charm is in that clean, citrus-like tang held in the stalk alone.
Drainage channels run along the edge of the farm, and just beyond them a shaded patch of soft green grass opens up — the place where we’ll settle down and start cooking.
Barak Sagi’s recipes come straight from the source, and I’ll describe the dough-making separately. As for the filling, here’s what Barak explained for anyone who missed it: if there’s no wild beet or sorrel, or simply if you want to try something different, you can use other leaves as well. Most store-bought versions rely on spinach, sometimes on mangold. Among foraged greens, I’ve heard of mustard, Chenopodium, even Stellaria — and surely many others could work.
In Arabic cooking, za’atar (the real wild kind) is sometimes added, though never on its own. I’ve most often tasted these pastries as fatayer, usually with Circassian cheese folded inside.
What truly matters is the slow cooking of the filling. It needs time to shed all its moisture until it becomes thick, soft, almost paste-like — the texture that holds the pastry together from the inside.
Firewood must be completely dry, and the scent of the wood itself will subtly shape the flavor of whatever you cook over it.
A reinforced-concrete guard post stood here to protect the station and its buildings from any danger approaching across the open fields.
This building once housed the station’s communication room. It was erected in the mid-1930s, during the period of British operation, and unlike the older Ottoman-era structures with their tiled roofs, this one was given a flat roof. A single telephone line connected the station to the outside world, and inside stood a manual switchboard, its circuits opened and closed with the turn of a hand-crank.
The water tower served a simple, essential purpose: supplying steam locomotives with the vast amounts of water they needed for each journey.
Today this building houses the Museum of the Valley Railway Station. In the days of the British Mandate, Kfar Yehoshua was the first stop on the line before reaching Haifa.
The historic Valley Railway once linked Haifa to the Hijaz line running between Damascus and the Arabian Peninsula. The Ottomans built it to give the Hejaz route access to a Mediterranean port and to compete with the French Hauran line. The stretch from Damascus to Zera covered 123 kilometers, and in 1903 the tracks from Zera to Haifa were completed. The Haifa–Beit She’an section opened in January 1904, spanning roughly 59 kilometers. After the establishment of the State of Israel, service on this line came to an end.
This house once belonged to the station manager. The kitchen and the bathroom were outside, as was common at the time.
At every railway station, one of the key professionals was the pump man — the person responsible for operating the pumps that lifted water into the tower. The English word *pump* gave rise to *pomper*, the title of his trade. But because Arabic lacks the “p” sound at the start of a word and replaces it with “b,” the name shifted in everyday speech and became *bumber*.
In the museum courtyard, several old freight cars are on display. One of them is a German railcar dating back to the early years of the First World War — a rare survivor of its time.
In the same courtyard stand freight cars sent from Germany to Israel after the Second World War, part of the reparations shipments of that period. These cars remained in service until the mid-1980s, mostly carrying citrus fruit from the orchards to the ports.
The main station building rose two stories high. The lower floor held the passenger hall, the ticket counter, and two small administrative rooms. The upper floor was the private domain of the station manager, where he lived with his family right above the daily rhythm of the trains.
A wonderful day — good food, warm company, and the kind of quiet ease that stays with you.
