Blue Mountain Tea

Blue Mountain Tea, both the name of the plant and the drink, is brewed with fresh or dried leaves of sweet or anise-scented goldenrod (Solidago odora). In former times, farmhands would gather and dry the leaves in summer, then peddle the tea from farm to farm during the winter — once a very lucrative cottage industry. Today it is mostly older Mennonite women who gather the wild herb to sell in farm markets. The only way to find the tea, aside from hunting for it in the wild, is to go