Mushrooms, 'sang, and Kilo enjoys a short walkabout

I found a cluster of yellow-orange mushrooms on the Jennifer Trail down by the sand mound.  These mushrooms are growing in clusters and mostly around an old stump, although several clumps are separated from the stump by distances up to 2 feet.

I installed hardware cloth screen to the frames that top my ginseng raised bed.  There are two frames to make them more manageable as the dimensions of the raised bed are 12 feet long by 4 feet wide, and 10 inches deep.  When I started working on the frames this afternoon I found the soil at the top of the raised beds had been dug by squirrels hiding hickory nuts.  So the screens will help keep those critters from digging up and eating the ginseng seeds.  We've had heavy rains over the past 36 hours or so and the soil in the raised beds is moist, but not muddy.  Today it is sunny out, so I will hold off planting the seeds and roots until tomorrow when it is supposed to be cloudy with showers.  Ginseng seeds are pretty particular about staying moist, so I want to planting conditions to be favorable. 

 

When I took the dogs out for a pee after breakfast both Buddy and Kilo seemed to sense something down the Jennifer Trail.  I called to them to do their business but both of them bolted down the trail to the left.  Buddy came back pretty quickly but Kilo did not.  I drove the RTV down the driveway to check out Ron and Darlene's to see if Kilo had gone there, but no luck.  I then took the RTV down the trails to the fire pit and still no luck.  I drove back to the house to get my phone in case someone had found Kilo and wanted me to pick him up.  Then I walked down the Jennifer Trail towards the fire pit, calling out to Kilo as I walked.  When I reached the junction of the 3 trails, I saw him headed towards me from the direction of the shed.  He seemed tired from his 30 minute walkabout but otherwise he was in good shape.  I put a small leash on him to walk back to the house but I think he was too tired to sprint away.  He has been lying about resting ever since.

Sound bite

"Yesterday I didn't know what a hen of the woods was, and today I recognized a melted one."  Paul found a decayed mushroom and rubbed it on a stump closer to the house to encourage a new crop.

Mushrooms

A large hen of the woods specimen from our woods, estimated at 2lbs.  Paul froze 3 quarts and we had 1 c, sauteed, for dinner, just to test our tolerance.  Paul could smell a perfume in it; I couldn't. It's a great year for 'shrooms of all kinds here.

Puffballs

I found 2 puffballs at work. The first one was the size of a large softball.  the second was more like a volley ball. We ate them.  Yum.

Jennifer and Jonathan helped install a new owl house.

I spread out the mounds of compost in the meadow on the bare mineral soil area and mowed most of the meadow. Buddy prefers the wide open spaces to run in his circles.

We've had a large crop of mushrooms appearing across the forest after the heavy rainfalls of last week so I thought I would capture some of the colors they exhibited.  We found several areas of Boletus or as we called them in Germany, Steinpilz (stone mushroom).  These are edible and each mushroom can be quite large.  

 The puffball is from the path into my office.

August photos

The ailanthus is dead; the rains have brought mushrooms; some of the sunflowers are 10 feet tall.

Mushrooms

With all the rain we've been having we have some wonderful mushrooms around. The plugs that we so painstakingly drilled and pounded into fresh oak logs have fruited. We should have picked the 4 mushrooms yesterday because now they have bugs and aren't very appetizing.
Blackberries are beautiful this year also. Some are the size of my thumbnail and very sweet. Prince Cheeks learned to pick them: one for the bucket, 4 for me. Gambol still enjoys them too; he has earned his master picker badge although he still doesn't share.

Village Green Market Dinner

As part of our effort to get to know our neighbors I volunteered to co-direct the Julian Green Market, a "eat local" effort in Julian that encourages local produce providers (fruits, veggies, meat, eggs, etc.) to sell their wares in our town square. To gin up interest in the market's startup later this month, we had a kick off dinner on Saturday -- people donated food and they sold tickets as a fund raiser. Since I would be in Syracuse for KatieP's graduation, I volunteered the Baron to cook up a batch of local mushrooms for the dinner. He got the recipe from the Penn State University (PSU) chef who lectured at Venison 101 class: sauté slices white cap mushrooms in butter, pepper, and a splash of lime or lemon juice. He uses Real Lemon juice. We get our mushrooms from the PSU Mushroom Lab that sells them once a week in 10 lbs boxes. So he was definitely using local produce. The most of the butter was from the PSU Creamery, but needed some additional, so I also used butter from Maryland. As a garnish he used organic curly parsley from a farm in PA. He sautéed about 8 lbs of the mushrooms Sat afternoon (started slicing mushrooms at 2:30 and finished cooking at 4:15 PM) and took them to the dinner for the 5:00 PM start. Food at the dinner was buffet style: appetizers of pesto and small crackers, BBQ pork and chicken donated by Hogs Galore, fresh greens and salad dressing, asparagus steamed in lemon juice and olive oil, rice and wheat pasta salads, bread, vegetarian pizza, several pies, cookies, and sticky buns from the Unionville Cafe, and a variety of cold and hot drinks donated by the Community Supervisors. The mushrooms got raves and were all gone. So I guess you could say that for Mothers' Day Paul was a stand-in for Leslie at the local dinner.