end of the season chanterelles

The end of the season. Chanterelles. Or maybe just the beginning.  The jaunt to Oregon was bittersweet. A final foray for the season and a mission to collect belongings out of the storage unit. Wrapping up life in a place you call home is never easy but I think the continual downpour might have made it just slightly more so.  Two days spent at the coast turned up the strongholds in the chanterelle kingdom. The ones that refused to give up but instead proved to hide like nobodies business. It took not only a full-on rain samurai suit but also a considerable amount of digging around through water laden ferns, moss and fir needles to uncover these little delicacies.

 

Demoralized

In David Arora’s  terms: “demoralized.”

we literally spend hours searching various burn areas; 1^st year burns, 2^nd year, 3^rd year. Disturbed sites, Manzanita and Ceanothis thickets, loams & sands, slash piles…. Nothing.

 We discovered early season mushrooms of all shapes, colors and sizes; even a good number of false morels and an amazingly large conk. But, when it came right down to what we hunted- we found not one.

Not a single that is, until we gave up.  At that very moment what showed up right in-between my feet? A big fat black morel. And then another, and another…. And the story goes.

We ended up in an open forested area and found ourselves spotting them left and right. Morchellas everywhere. So I suppose the term demoralized explains exactly our affliction: it wasn’t until we stopped looking that we actually found what we desired most.

Morel of the story: the best things in life tend to pop up in the most unusual of places & at the times we expect them least. Keep an open mind.

**Looking for a fantastic fungi reference book that will blow your mind away? “Mushrooms Demystified” by David Arora. Throwing this beast in your backpack feels a bit like a brick so for our west coast outings I love “All the rain promises and more”; I leave the big un at home.

pied de mouton

    the early arrivals.... the gardens are getting planted and the forest is beginning to bloom once again. Last weekend a small harvest of early mushrooms graced our egg scramble after a quick hillside foray. The season is upon us. The lettuce is starting to appear in small quantities on dinner plates and the spinach and kale has taken it's holding in the garden beds. The fava beans growing larger by the day. The tulips and daffodils have competition.  I sat one morning at the kitchen table, a cup of black coffee in hand and watched T carefully layout and count the new wallawalla onions that were bound for our modest beds. Up until recently the garden attire consisted of rubber boots and dainty steps. The back yard over the course of the winter months took on the consistency of  chocolate pudding; so much in fact that the dogs adapted to skirting the perimeter to avoid the sink. Curious to the project, Huckleberry (the furry foot) repeatedly stepped on the organized shoots. T pushed him back and scolded, but to no avail. I could do nothing more than sit back and smile at the site from my seat behind the glass.

what I call love

When you believe so whole heartedly in a place, you will do almost anything. Waking up in freezing cold snowy weather to greet the pitch black (save for the stars), don a down jacket and rubber boots, commence to hauling water by 8am, searching for cinder blocks hiding under the snow, standing outside with a cup of steaming coffee watching a 55 gallon drum of water heat up while the sun rises in the sky; this is not far from a deep entrenchment of love. This was the second workshop that G and I offered at the Nature Center on growing oyster mushrooms, the only difference is this time we went through the fairly intensive process in the heart of winter. After spending exorbitant amounts of money to ship the spawn the previous year, I decided on carrying the 15lbs of oyster spawn from Oregon through the airport. Equipped with letters from lab managers, tariff codes and an extra hour of time intended for delays, I was ready to defend my stock against perplexed security officials.  Here is where I would insert the comical security story but to my amazement I walked through scanners, beepers, the officials unstopped and arrived to the ERNC with a two beautiful fully myceliated bags of Pleurotus ostreatus spawn. Chosen for cultivation temperature (requiring the lower end of the spectrum for oyster mushrooms) the hope is for successful flushes of nicely clustered blue hued oysters in these first time Alaskan homes. Re-routing the workshop to inside the nature center after realizing the added chaos that the venture to yurt in the deep snow with 20 people was going to be, we moved furniture, laid out tarps, and sterilized tables.  The center took on an earthy organic smell with the mixing of grain with warm pasteurized straw and was filled with inquisitive minds and amazing questions. It felt good to be back.

Mushroom season

A small stand of Emetic Russula mushrooms brighten the forest floor. A non-edible mushroom that offers a bit of bliss for the eyes instead of the tongue. Autumn is a savory month for the senses. It brings out the abundance of forest smells, sights, taste and sounds. For me the crisp chill of the morning is a welcomed event after months of summer sun. The air and the light change during this time of year.  There always seems to be the day that you just know autumn has arrived. This year my ventures have followed autumn down the coast; first meeting it in Alaska and now further south in Oregon. Food is abundant, but only for a few more weeks. Frost will come soon and will end the feast that exists all around. My gathering instinct strong; collecting and preserving the bounty.

Ripening Blackberries

Birds Nest Fungi- Do you seen the eggs in the nest?? The "eggs" actually contain the spores for this fungus and are called peridioles. The "nest" acts as a splash cup. As rain falls it catches the droplets sending the peridioles flying out of the nest. Peridioles of certain birds nest fungi have a sticky trail of thread that wraps around twigs during flight and will help the peridiole swing and wrap around the piece of wood. The spores can then germinate and start the life cycle over again.