I've found an abundance of berries and fruit. Processing it all has been a bit overwhelming. I want great taste, easy preparation, and new challenges. I suppose foragers could be typecast. We like new, different and unique tastes and ways to deal with food.

A foraging friend shared his home brewed black raspberry soda with me and I was in awe. If he could do it, could I?

Wine is a traditional way to create benefit (and long term storage) from fruit, as well as a lot of other food. Almost anything can be (and has been) fermented. Foraging for wine making materials is very doable. There are wild grapes everywhere. If you want something different, my foraging friend makes a delicately flavored sweet wine from black raspberries that fills the mouth with summer flavor. Ornamental cranberries are everywhere, they could be fermented. Pears, apples, mulberries, many of the sour but abundant fruits; the list could go on and on.

I don't drink alcohol though. So that isn't a really good option for me. And while Euell Gibbons can make anything into marmalade or jam, it would seem, I'm not much of a jam eater either. My needs are more than fully met each year by the gifts of jam and jelly made by friends and clients.

Juice is OK, not always the most efficient use of fruits, but certainly a good way to use lots of berries and more common fruit readily available to urban foragers like apples and pears. My recent experience with mayapple juice was pretty exciting, and left me wanting more.

I've never been much of a pop drinker and won't buy the colored water overly sweetened high fructose corn syrup with added chemicals that is so popular. And it is easy enough to mix carbonated water with fruit juice and be happy,. Why pay extra for cans of natural soda? With more awareness of looking for local, renewable and sustainable choices, is there a good soda pop option? After enjoying my foraging friend's creation, I was enthusiastic to try it.

I made blueberry juice. Yes, not foraged, but the knowledge gained will be applied to my future foraged ingredients.

I dumped 5 pounds of clean blueberries into a large pot, with enough water so that they had room to bob. It turned out to be about a gallon of water and berries. I heated them until they started to simmer and then turned off the heat. I then let the whole thing cool, then used a stick blender in the pot to blend them thoroughly. Within a few minutes the whole thing was a thick liquid.

This works especially well with a fruit with no seeds or skin to remove. If you have bad tasting skin or seeds, or seeds that are unsafe to eat, you'll need to mash and strain instead of blending. But even then, unless you remove the skin first you run the risk of the bad taste of the skin flavoring your juice.

I used a jelly bag to strain the whole mess, and splattering blueberries do create a great mess. Do not wear your favorite shirt. Wipe up spills right away. This stuff stains really well. After filling the jelly bag a few times, I had almost a gallon of concentrated juice, and just about a cup of pulp to compost. While still warm, I added a little less than a cup of honey from my bees. I froze 1/2 gallon and refrigerated the other.

The concentrate was the base for plain juice, I just added 3 parts water to one part juice and was happy with the taste, but I like more dilute juice. The great thing about concentrate is it takes less room to store, and you can decide how strong you'd like your drink.

On to the carbonation part.

The greatest danger in home carbonation is explosions. Really. If you put something in glass, and it actively ferments, there is pressure. When I was a kid and made my own homemade root beer, I used plastic milk jugs. It was cool to watch them bulge with the pressure, and nothing ever exploded. But with the root beer and my dad's homemade wine, we did get seepage and tops that popped, and occasional huge messes with lots of fruit flies instantly showing up to add to the cleanup. Think carefully about your ability to remember to attend to the brew, remember that you have a potential for flying glass shards in your kitchen, and consider and minimize the risks. No matter how careful you are, things can go wrong, If you decide to try this, put the bottles in a place where it would be relatively safe if things do explode. Or use plastic, but your results may vary.

OK, enough warnings. The recipe is simple. Add water to your concentrate so that you have juice. I made 1/2 gallon. Heat that for about 20-30 minutes, then remove from heat. If it is as sweet as you'd like, add about 1/2 cup more sweetener. Less if you use honey or other more concentrated sweetener. The extra sweet is for the yeast to work on, it will not add to finished sweetness much. Let it cool. Sprinkle 1/2 tsp of yeast on to the juice, and then stir. I used baking yeast. The same stuff you use to make bread. You can use special yeasts for making champagne or beer, but to my surprise bread yeast works just fine.

Have sterilized bottles ready. The bottles matter. They must be heavy duty glass, and a flip top with a metal cage is ideal. I'm using some that had fancy carbonated lemonade and other juices. Within a few days of looking for them, I found three I was able to beg from friends. In my first experiment, I tried using other bottles and those all failed. Only the one with the narrow neck and very well sealed top worked.

Pour the cooled mixture into the bottles; a funnel is handy; and leave the top loose. Leave a very generous 3-4 inches at the top for expansion. This is really important.

Do not flip the metal cage tight. Put the bottles into a safe, shady spot. Let sit for 24 hours, and then flip the tops so that the bottles are now tightly sealed. Let sit for another 24 hours. At the end of the second 24 hours, put the bottles into the refrigerator. Don't open them, don't test them, don't shake them. Let the future pop be in the refrigerator for at least another 24 hours. At that point, you can carefully open them, preferably over a sink. My foraging friend places the bottle inside another container so that if it does overflow he can catch it and drink it.

That's it. If all has gone well, you'll have a carbonated drink naturally made and naturally sweetened. And, because it is so wonderful and natural, it won't last long. Expect your pop to last just two to three days, so make small batches each time.

Juices can also be made by a cold process, pressing the pulp, using a juicer, and more, and these will retain greater nutritional value. However, uncooked fruit from the wild will have its own potential yeasts, fungus, blooms, and other interesting bacteria. The cooking stage, before adding yeast, will help contain that. So you can use cold pressed juices and then cook them. But since heat allows more juice to be extracted, you might as well begin that way if you intend to carbonate it.

I've been advised and inspired by an experienced vintner, have watched his technique for over a year, grew up with my dad's wine making and had early experiences with making root beer almost 40 years ago. But I am still a newcomer to this field. Your ideas, suggestions, feedback and successes would be welcome.

I am freezing juice concentrate. If you are as well, remember to leave lots of headroom when you freeze liquids. I'll be able to make this pop a few times a month until next spring when there will be fresh ingredients again. Variety is the spice of life and of foraging as well.

This fall and next spring, after I have the fruits and berries down, I will try this trick with wild ginger, sassafras, and other tasty roots. Now that I've seen how quick and easy it is, the experimentation has begun!

Linda Diane Feldt is a local holistic health Ppractitioner and herbalist, as well as the author of Spinach and Beyond: Loving Life and Dark Green Leafy Vegetables.

Photos by Linda Diane Feldt