Whats Fermenting? Dandelion Wine!

This bowl is bigger than it looks and I am just doing a test this year by making about a 1/2 gallon of wine.

I have always wanted to make dandelion wine but am allergic to brewers and bakers yeast, so wasnt sure how to go about it. Grapes apples and pears will ferment with just the wild yeasts on their skins. I didnt know if dandelion had natural yeasts or where the sugar was going to come from for yeasts to eat since dandelions are not sweet, but this year we have honey from our bees and honey will ferment. Will this technically be a dandelion meed? Maybe, but I am doing it.

First I needed just the petals so my "wine" wouldnt be bitter.

After trying various methods, I arrived at this one. I cut just above the stem and just below the flower.

This is what was left...

 

and I just peeled it off.  Some came easier than others.

Once I had my petals I put them in water with honey and orange zest etc. and put it in the sun for 3 days to make a sun tea. All recipes on line boiled the tea and added yeast when it cooled so I am out on my own limb here. Deirdra Heekan who owns la garagista(as she says a woman who makes wine in her garage?) and wrote the book An Unlikely Vineyard writes about a woman farmer she met in Italy who encouraged her "to swim against the current." This is what I seem to do whether difficult or productive or not. I am determined to make food and drink from basic elements. I want it to be healthy and tasty as well as hearty unique and full of life. I dont need or want it to be consistent which to me compromises the organic essence of living food. The full title of Deirdra's book is An Unlikely Vineyard The Education of a Farmer and Her Quest for Terroir. To Deirdra dandelions are a sign that the soil is compacted because they help break up and irrigate the earth. Her "quest" is similar to mine but I am more of a gatherer than a farmer.  Though my search also is for food healthy living soil. Earth untreated and wild, maybe unpredictable, but trustworthy in that nature knows how to create life. A dandelion that many kill in hopes of the perfect green lawn, to me is food with the most life force energy possible. Food closest to being alive is said to have more of this life force energy. Soil if not chemically treated is overflowing with life. I would like food from this kind of soil rather than soil killed and enriched with chemicals. And I would like to let plants offer me what they come with. If I control the process by boiling and killing what exists, and then add a product that gives me consistency in outcome, I miss out on what nature is offering me in this moment in time. And also if I dont try this experiment I have to give up wine since I am allergic to its additional ingredients.

While I was looking for and not finding a natural way to make flower wine, I ran across a recipe for dandelion petal cookies.

I had the dandelions in the yard and developed the petal releasing method so why not? Yum and healthy too when adapted using a nutritious sweetener and adding some mineral rich arrowroot flour.