Nettle Mead

After a long sleepy Sunday morning in bed, Joe and I walked down to the bridge over the creek before breakfast. The bridge was built this fall to allow us to farm on both sides of the creek and preserve the nine-acre restoration zone surrounding the portion of the creek that runs through our farm. I remarked at all the nettles that were along the bank. Joe reminded me that those were the nettles I had to contend with after I fell into the creek last September. It was the day Joe proposed to me, the bridge had not yet been built, and we were harvesting winter squash from the fields across the creek. A fallen log was used to cross the creek then, and my foot slipped as I tried to make the long step out onto the log. The deep water swallowed me up to my shoulders and as I struggled to hoist myself up onto the bank, I dragged my body through the nettles.

Today we harvested nettles (with gloves on) and made nettle mead. We always wild ferment our brews. Meaning we mix some sort of juice with lots of honey and let the natural yeasts in the air find the sweet mixture and get to work converting the sugars into alcohol. We can’t say it always works out well, but when it does it’s been great. Nettle mead was an idea we had last year and have been waiting until prime nettle season (right now) to brew up a batch. As we’ve read up on it, turns out it’s not our brilliant idea. But we now have five gallons of sweet nettle tea sitting in our kitchen, waiting.

In the next few months, we’ll dine regularly on nettle pesto, nettle tea, and nettle lasagna.