I don't know where you live, but around here there are yards and fields filled with dandelions, free for the taking (with permission of course). If people use weedkiller they aren't going to have dandelions. It seems if they don't use weedkiller, they probably wouldn't put anything else toxic on their yards. Usually the yards or lots have to be overgrown to get a good crop so no one is likely to be putting poison on those fields. I make dandelion wine once and paid the neighbor's little kids a penny a blossom. It takes a LOT of blossoms!

Party. I don't know about the recipes I have, but I had a cousin who made the best dry wines from all these fruits. I was surprised at how good they were.. blue ribbon every year at the Nebraska State Fair.

There was a winery outside Hood River, OR that made the best Pear Wine. Not sweet at all. DH and I use to buy a case when we visisted and bring it back to CA.

You can make dry or sweet wine from fruit. To make it dry, you just let it work longer; the little yeasties eat the sugar so it becomes dry. I also made elderberry wine from wild elderberries picked from bushes in the foothills of the Cascade Mtns. The worst wine I ever made because I didn't know you had to pick every single stem from the berries. I just had snipped them off the branches, so there were stems and a few longer pieces of little branches. It was foul. Rhubarb wine is trickier to get dry and is usually a better a tiny bit sweet, because it can become bitter. Kind of like adding strawberries to keep it from becoming too sour in desserts. But it's a beautiful pale pink color.

My sister's father-in-law used to make dandelion wine. You've got me interested in trying to make some, if my BIL still has the recipe for it. I can remember helping my sister & BIL picking dandelions for hours so he could make it.

Too bad you don't live close by, my yard is mostly "organic" and thus I have more dandelions than I know what to do with. I eat some, but no where near the amount that I compost. I pull them and stuff grass seeds in the holes. Our yard is not too bad for dandelions. I have a native plant garden for the pollinators with early native plants for their pollen needs. Actually a lot of early emerging bees are ground nesting, and they get their pollen from trees and shrubs, with the timing of their emerging from the ground evolved to coincide with the flowering of their food sources, many of which we have bulldozed. Dandelions are nice for some bees but for many others, they won't work as a food source, they can't just substitute.

I've had fritters from the dandelion blossoms, I wasn't too crazy about those . . . wine might be interesting, although I can't drink much wine due to diet issues.