Mushroom Mania!

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Before I start I wanted to share this press release about the American chestnut  with you. For those not
familiar, the American chestnut was once an abundant ecologically and culturally important tree native to Eastern North America.  While there are pockets that survived and some regrowth, the population was devastated by the chestnut blight. Introduced in the early 1900's, the blight (a pathenogenic fungus) caused major die-off and had infected most mature trees by the 1940's. There has been a lot of research since then centered on how to restore the population, and finally there is a viable opportunity! Skim the press release, its neat!

Photo - Katie Duane

You may recall that last fall I was dead set on finding Chanterelles, and that eventually I succeeded. Well that patch was in Whatcom County, where we no longer live, so we went foraging early and often, and again when we went to participate in a work party a few weeks ago. We also showed our friends the spot so that some one else could enjoy our little gold mine.
We started looking in late September when Brandon and I stumbled across some on a hike and thought hey, time to started hunting!
First, Katie and I went a-looking, and with many squeals of delight we alighted on emerging patch after patch in the SuperSecret location where the Otter and I found them last year. And we had success!

The very next day, the boys were free to join us, so we checked another muchlesssecret spot we spotted while hiking. The spot allocations are based on the perceived knowledge the public has as to the presence of the Chanterelles. Spot one: no obvious empty mushroom holes and no cut ends; Spot two: lots of evidence of other foragers, and discarded mushrooms. In the center is an unknown peculiar fungal apparatus, to the right, Chanterelles!

Photo - Katie Duane 

Photo - Katie Duane

Photo - Katie Duane

 The sad thing that so many people don't seem to get is that if you take all the mushrooms (or resources) there won't be any for anyone else to enjoy (or use), AND you endanger your chances of getting more mushrooms (a limited, renewable resource if managed properly).
We take caution - we don't pick every firm lush Chanterelle we stumble upon, we take at most 50%. I am probably coming off as a self-righteous know-it-all, but it is infuriating to me to be wandering along and track across discarded mushrooms. If they weren't good enough, why did you pluck them in the first place? Sure I picked one or two bads before I got the hang of it, but the consistency of shroom tossing is... sad.

Photo - Katie Duane

Katie and I teamed together to make mushroomy dinners, the same dinner in fact, both nights. Cream of Chanterelle soup, beans from their garden, and Parmesan bread.

Photo - Peter Duane

 
 When Brandon and I returned in late October, it was no longer T-shirt weather, it looked more like this... On Saturday afternoon Katie and I went out, then Brandon and I went again the next morning. Clearly we were milking it for all it was worth.

 For a while we wandered, finding many soggy and too-old mushrooms of magnificent size, and then we struck it. The mushroom motherlode. He went uphill as I went down, and I laid my eyes upon a remarkable sight; a 10 x 15 foot dense patch of beauties.

 It of course called for silly pictures!

 We came home that weekend with 8+ pounds of Chanterelles.

Chanterelles are a mycorrhizal fungus, meaning they have a mutualistic relationship with the roots of vascular plants, specifically here, conifers. We have had our best luck under Douglas fir and hemlock stands, but in other places they are associated with birch, beech and oaks.
Chanterelles are the perfect fall food, containing significant amounts of Vitamin C, Potassium and Vitamin D, the latter being something we in the PNW struggle with access to for about 6-8 months of the year. According to Wiki, people have been eating Chanterelles since the 1500's, so they have definitely stood the test of time. Some claim they smell apricoty when fresh. I wouldn't go that far (am I an apricot snob? Maybe.) but they do definitely smell faintly sweet and fruity when you have a nice basketful.

Here's the obligatory Chanterelle glamour shot. 

We have also foraged a bit here, and also at our training. We were successful but to a much lesser degree. We did see many other stellar fungal bodies popping up here and there. 

So now I can tell you we have had risotto, pizza, soup, gravy, quiche and best of all (although the soup and risotto are very hard to beat) a galette with onions and cherve slightly modified from A Year of Pies, which Rachel gifted me a while ago. The surplus (because we had a week-long training to go to and several pounds left) was dry sauteed down, plunked into cupcake tins, and frozen. So now we have about a dozen little shroom cakes in the freezer awaiting future use. Ah to be rich!

Another glamour shot for the road. Happy Sunday!

Yes, I am Alive.

You know, when I started this blog, I did not envision people getting so attached to it. While not bad, it was rather unexpected and thus the sibling badgering might have been avoided some had I not started this thing. Nevertheless... It is a great way to share some of the photos, and accompanying stories of my intermittent escapades.
In an effort to get up to speed, we'll have to delve into what I did this summer.
In July, I did a hike near Mt Baker called Skyline Divide, which I have wanted to do for quite some time. It was marvelous, and all my huffing, puffing, and grumbling to myself about my excessive sugar consumption was well worth it for the stunning vista.
I saw a suite of orchids... Do you see that there is a dancing man in one of them?

A small Clintonia (spp uniflora?) type lily that lined the lower wooded trail (left). Here and there in wet areas were currants blooming away. Flowers were spare til the very top where there were glacier lilies (right)

 This spider was just waiting for a tasty bee or butterfly to land on it's flower. 

 There were what one might call OMGALOT! of glacier lilies

 The marvelous Mt Baker. It looked like there had been an avalanche that striped part of the right side of the dome. When we drove to Bellingham last weekend it had already snowed in the mountains and Baker looked pristine and beautiful. See that little hill/peak on the left? I, being of indomitable spirit once reaching the main summit, thoroughly believed that I ought to climb it. You can't tell from here, but it's a few hundred feet higher.

 Heather flowers

 This was early July, lots of snow fields to slip across.

Mt Shuksan was also out and about. 

 Good thing I mastered that hill, because that's where all the butterflies were hanging out.  This poor critter looked like it got snagged by a bird. It was an easy one to follow.

So, that was that. 

In August, I got a phone call from Rachel. She had barely escaped hospitalization because her spidy senses told her to up and run right before a sizable tree limb took out her stall and a neighbors. My secret plan to arrive at the farm the next day could not have worked out better.  I am very grateful that no one was hurt, and the material loses were minimal.

Anyway, I went to the farm. Fig season was in full swing. I met the character below, who quite possibly adores figs more that I do. She certainly squeals louder when you give them to her. The estimates are that she is now over 200 pounds, and I cannot fathom what will become of all that meat come butchering time. The thing that freaks me out most about pigs (other than their intellect) is their incredibly human looking eyes.

 There are always mantises lounging in mom's flower beds, waiting for bees and butterflies, or whatever unsuspecting prey might bumble passed.

Grapes were ripe too, so I got to gorge on two fruit categories that do not do so well in my cool damp climate. There are still an abundance of these leaf-leg bugs, this guy is missing one. They sure are pretty (for being a pest!). Then I drove my butt back to Bellingham.


September found us moved out of our little apartment and staying with friends Katie & Peter (you rember Katie. I worked with her.) in Bellingham as Brandon finished up his job and we both applied like mad people to jobs all over the west coast.

On the left is the day that I a) learned that not being able to independently close your left eye is uncommon and b) hooked a baseball cap over my bun, used said cap as an eye-patch, and learned to shoot a bow.




We did find time to go on wanders together,  like to the Stimpson Family Nature Preserve.
Frogs on  lily pads! Its like a fairy tale!

The longer we looked, the more we saw. 

 The preserve is a series of beaver ponds that are very important habitat for amphibians

 Brandon had never hiked near Mt Baker in the summer, so we went back to Artist's Point and wandered out along the ridge for a while.

 See that smudge on Brandon? That's the devastating scratch in my camera lens. Yup.

 From here you can see Shuksan...

 lots of cool geomorphology...

and Mt Baker. 

We proceeded on that day to go mushroom hunting. No gathering happened, but we sure saw a lot of curious fungus. On the left is a chanterelle-like growth (no eating!) that was enormous, we think it was some kind of Pig's Ear.

 Angel wings, gorgeous and ethereal white in the dim old growth, but too young to pick.

 A little lily with it's developed seed thing, which I had never seen before. Shiny and blue! To the right is bunchberry being all bunchy. The bloom is white and being a dogwood, looks like a mini dogwood blossom.
Below are some pretty to admire aminitas.

 The last few photos were from along this 'creek' that feeds into the North Fork Nooksack River. I've seen smaller rivers.

 Since then we moved. To Olympia. Because Brandon got a job. AND I got a job! Working with... SALMON! Haha! And to think I thought I was through with fish...

While preparing my little bio for work I experienced some difficulty when searching for an appropriate photo (must be smiling but not being a dork, close enough to see my face, solitary, preferably not cuddling a dog/cat or lets face it - frog, fungus etc...) to accompany the text. Probably because it's much more fun to take photos like this:

Happy Daylight Savings!