Hiya, Rural Sprout readers,Â
With the cooler weather this week, I’ve been a busy little squirrel, getting ready for winter. I don’t think my Dutch oven left my stovetop, with all the soup I’ve been making. And I started several batches of mead and cider to enjoy over the holidays
and winter.  I picked dandelions this spring to make a batch of dandelion mead, but I got busy, so I put them in the freezer to use later. On a whim, I decided to try a batch of dandelion and blueberry mead. We’ll see how it turns out. Â
But it got me thinking about a very interesting winter that Dad and I spent in the cabin.
I grew up spending weekends with my dad, who was an off-grid homesteader for many years. We lived in a log cabin that he built himself, using timber from our 10-acre property. This log cabin was heated with a wood stove that Dad made in his blacksmith
shop. It sat in the cellar, accessible via a trap door in the middle of the cabin floor. Â In the middle of the cellar, next to the trap door steps, you would find the wood stove. Rough wooden shelves against one wall were lined with jar after jar of pickles, canned vegetables, and jams. On the opposite wall was all the firewood for the heating season, stacked two rows deep from ceiling to floor. I used
to help dad stack it in the summer. Â
My dad also made homemade wine. Usually dandelion wine, as we had a meadow full of ingredients every year. Â
He would always set up a huge 5-gallon carboy of dandelion wine in the basement each year, and this one year was no different. As a kid, I loved going down into the basement with a flashlight and watching the thousands of tiny bubbles rise in the glass
carboy and the slow glug-glug of the airlock. Visible proof that the yeast was busy doing its job.Â
I still enjoy watching the bubbles in my own ferments.Â
One Saturday morning in particular, the cabin was freezing. The stove had gone out during the night, and Dad decided he needed to shovel the ashes out before starting another fire. So, down he went, still in his long johns, through the trap door. I sat
at the table wrapped in a blanket, eating hot oatmeal, listening to the radio and the sounds of dad working below me.Â
And that’s when it happened.Â
I heard an almighty crash and several expletives shouted from the cellar. Dad came back up through the trap door, his sheepskin slippers slopping and his legs covered in wet ash. He had turned with a shovelful of ashes and just barely bumped the carboy
with the tip of the shovel. Apparently, it had been enough. The carboy shattered, covering our dirt floor cellar with half-fermented dandelion wine.  Now, if you’ve ever made wine, you know that as the yeast die off, they fall to the bottom of the carboy, and eventually, you siphon the cleared wine off this sediment into another container. Those dead yeast stink to high heavens, and they were now all
over the wood and the dirt cellar, next to the hot wood stove. Â
The cabin smelled like funky dandelion vinegar for the entire winter.Â
I didn’t think that smell would ever fade. As an adult, I’ve made plenty of dandelion mead, but I make it a rule not to keep shovels in my basement. Â
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Did you miss a newsletter or want to read a few for inspiration? Find past newsletters here. Don't forget to check out our Facebook page for daily updates.Â
That's all for this week, Rural Sprout Readers.
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