Winecraft: Daylily #2

The daylilies just keep coming, bursting forth with their irrepressible cheeriness each morning, truly living in the moment…each bloom has just a single day in the sun, so they make it a glorious one! I had to try to capture that exuberance in a bottle, hoping to honor it by making a truly special, ephemeral wine: a wine that would remind me of the hot days of summer with each sip.

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Farm Foraging: Black Locust Flower Syrup & Infused Oil

There seem to be new flowers blooming daily – we usually catch the first hint of scent wafting over to us during morning chores. With the hot, sticky weather we’ve been having, the fragrance may even hang over an area like a perfumed cloud, like it did with the black locust flowers. Anything that smells that great merits further investigation!

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More Dandelion Delights: Refreshing Herbal Beer

The bumper crop of dandelions on the farm has inspired me to look for new ways to use these delicious and nutritious gems. My most recent find was a recipe from Mother Earth News (by Roger Phillips, April 2015) for dandelion beer. In his article, the author provides some interesting history behind the drink: it was apparently a very popular brew among iron foundry and pottery workers in England. No tiny paper umbrella with this one!

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