I have always said that I want as much of my yard to make food as possible. I garden a little more every year, and there are wild blackberries in my woods, but I’ve decided to take it a step further and put the wildflower to good use 🙂

My current home brewing kick has inspired me to make dandelion wine. It turns out that it takes a crap ton of dandelions to make a gallon of wine. And almost everything I read said to remove the stems and as much of the green parts as possible, because it’s really bitter. Once every couple of days, I pick at least 100 dandelions…

  … and then I remove the stems and add them to my collection in the freezer…

I need to fill at least one more freezer bag before I can brew, and it’s really a race between my abilities and desires to pick the flowers and my HOA complaining about my unmowed lawn. It’s looking pretty ragged (or super alive and lush, in my opinion) so somebody is bound to whine before too long. Oh well.

Oh! And because I’d hate to waste any part of the flower, I feed the stems to the goats, and they are very appreciative 🙂

While out there picking dandelions, I’ve been noticing TONS of wild violets popping up all over the place. Obviously I want to find a way to use these little beauties as well, and I would love to hear suggestions! Have any of your foragers ever used violets in recipes? I know that people do it, and I’m dying for ideas!