He makes mead -- honey wine -- flavored with ground ivy and with dandelions, and he makes a soft, creamy root beer using burdock, dandelion and yellow dock roots, along with some other ingredients.

At a recent workshop on homemade sodas at the Honey Gardens Apiaries retail store on U.S. 7 in Ferrisburgh, everyone sipped samples while Erb's assistant chopped up a thick burdock root for a demonstration of the root beer recipe.

"That's one plant we always try to get out of our yard," observed a workshop participant. "It's good to know it has a use."