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.  

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.

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.  

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.