Oct 10

Oct 10 Bring in the harvest

Celebrate Sukkot with a visit to a pumpkin patch!

Sukkot celebrates the fall harvest. It is the longest and happiest festival of the Jewish year! It began in ancient Israel, when most Jewish people were farmers. In the fall, the farmers needed to quickly gather their crops, so they built little huts or booths right in the fields, where they could conveniently work and sleep from sun up to sundown! The harvest lasts for seven days, and it is named for the little booths in Hebrew - Sukkah (singular) Sukkot (plural)!

During Sukkot, it’s fun for children to experience a harvest. Growing up, my parents took us apple picking. But in Florida, we experience a different kind of harvest! Enter the pumpkin! Living in Central Florida, there are pumpkin patches a-plenty, and they provide a wonderful and colorful visual for children to see first-hand what harvesting a crop looks like!

Pumpkins and gourds (both called D’la-at in Hebrew) were also one of the first fruits to be harvested – not only for their hearty flesh, but their shells were also dried and used as water vessels!

On your way to a pumpkin patch, there is a story about a little Sukkot pumpkin that you can tell your children!

There was once a little pumpkin, bumpy and not so round. He lived in a garden with many kinds of fruits and vegetables. Throughout the Jewish year, he saw all his friends get “picked” to celebrate different holidays - potatoes and apples for Hanukkah, parsley and horseradish for Passover, onions, carrots and celery each Friday for Shabbat, and apples (again!) for Rosh Hashanah. The little bumpy pumpkin wanted to be picked too! One day, it decided to leave the garden in search for its perfect holiday. As it rolled along the road, it saw a little booth, where other little pumpkins, funny gourds, squashes, zucchinis were all lined up, and waiting to be brought in. The little pumpkin asked if it could join, and all the fruits and vegetables shouted yes, and happily invited the little pumpkin inside their booth to their harvest. The little pumpkin knew it found it’s home - right inside the sukkah, where all are welcome!

We hope you have fun finding your own little bumpy Sukkot D’la-at! Share with us some ways you are bringing in the Sukkot harvest with your family in the comments below! if you would like to find out more about welcoming guests (Hachnasat Orchim) during Sukkot and make a DIY sukkah greeter click here, and if you would like to make a DIY edible sukkah, click here!

For more family Sukkot activities, you can:

Find out more about welcoming guests (Hachnasat Orchim) during sukkot making a “sukkah greeter” from fallen branches
Bake a harvest of gourd cookies - Really! Little buttery 3D cookie gourds! We just had to make them because of this little pumpkin story
Build a tabletop sukkah from fallen twigs and branches
Make a sukkah from graham crackers and pretzel sticks and a harvest of dried fruit and nuts, and be sure to see our OG post on making edible sukkahs too (so cute!)