Elderflower lemonade arrives at the Farmers Market

People who shop regularly at farmers markets know there is a seasonal rhythm to local produce. Rhubarb and spring radishes are best in June. Cucumbers, garlic scapes, peas and strawberries arrive in July. And so does Darla Van Heerde's elderflower lemonade and non-alcoholic cordial.

Darla Van Heerde is also known as "Pants Mary," in honor of the Esko woman who once owned her land and apparently decided that 19th-century dresses were not convenient for logging and farm work. Darla continued Mary's farming tradition and also improved the landscape by turning a drainage channel into a wildlife pond, creating meadows of native plants as forage for her honeybees, installing a hoop house and solar panels, and planting fruit trees and honeyberry shrubs to complement her elderberries.

Darla grows varieties of the American elderberry, or Sambucus canadensis, which she considers the best for flowers and fruit, especially the Ranch and Bob Gordon varieties. The creamy white flat-topped flower clusters open in July, with berries ripening deep purple several weeks later. There is another local native elderberry, Sambucus racemosa, which has a conical flower head and red berries, but these are best left to be eaten by birds, which quickly strip the bushes clean.

Elderflowers have been used for centuries in fritters, wines and other recipes. Darla describes their light fragrance as similar to one of her favorite peonies. They add a hard-to-describe but lovely floral essence to her beverages, which take several days to prepare. First, she clips the flower heads and removes the florets from the stems. Next, she steeps the flowers, squeezes a lot of fresh lemons, and eventually bottles the refreshing drinks that are so popular at the market.

Picking elderflowers has another advantage - Darla doesn't have to worry that birds will swoop in to devour ripe elderberries. She also uses a loudspeaker in the middle of the field to discourage her feathered "frenemies" from taking too much of the harvest from the elderberry and honeyberry shrubs. It plays a custom-designed mix of distress calls from cedar waxwings and robins interspersed with predator calls. It's one of the ways that Darla chooses to combine the old and the new, the traditional and high-tech, to farm successfully and craft delicious products for the community to enjoy, like her elderflower lemonade and cordial.

The Carlton County farmers market is open 9 a.m. to noon Saturdays through Oct. 21 in front of Premiere Theatres in Cloquet. The Carlton site is open 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through mid-October in McFarland Park, Highway 210 and Grand Avenue.