Nature, beer, the coming holidays, or whatever.

countryboy said:
Thanks. Believe it or not, it's just a Fujifilm Finepix S 1500 10 megapixel digital camera with a 70.8mm built in lens. Not sure if it stores EXIF data. I don't know too much about manipulating images. I usually use GIMP, but only the easier functions.
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Amazing quality and detail.
 
ThatOwlWoman said:
Wow, how cool is that? It sounds as though you're on the way to creating your own little shroom farm! How did you prepare the spots?

Fungi are amazing organisms. Most shrooms have symbiotic relationships with other fungi, tree roots, various other plants. Like all of us they run on carbs, but since they don't perform photosynthesis they must rely on trees to provide that. In exchange, the shrooms provide trees with soil nutrients that they have broken down in "edible" form for the symbiote partner. The delicious part that we find is the fruiting body of the mother fungus, the mycelium. Using fungi rather than organic fertilizers in the garden is a relatively new concept, with a lot of promise to revolutionize large-scale agriculture as well.

My favorite shrooms here are the chanterelles. This past summer I wandered through woods and down trails and brambles and battled black flies and skeeters, and ended up with probably five lbs of them. I use a mesh bag so any spores present can find the earth again. The chanterelles taste like something maybe the gods have for breakfast. They're a beautiful golden color, unmistakable in the shade of the forest, although they generally flourish best at the edge of an open area that has been disturbed at some point, like a logging trail. Once you find them, their scent will draw you like a bloodhound to more. I can smell them in the woods from yards away... they smell sweet and fruity. You should have them where you live; I found them in the woods when I lived in rural Missouri NW of STL years ago.

You'll have to tell me about the slurry that you prepared. I just cleaned mine gently on paper towels with a soft toothbrush, then took the buggy and dried bits back to a suitable habitable in the woods and scattered them. Maybe not so good, eh? People here also search for the morels but I have yet to find a one.

http://sciweb.nybg.org/Science2/hcol/mycorrhizae.asp.html

Pic of one of my foraging expeditions.

View attachment 5284
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I picked up a bunch of ash, elm and oak chips and buried them in the spots where I spread the slurry. The back of my house faces south and has a two foot overhang off the foundation. Over the winter I raked up the leaves into the area and put up mesh. Early spring I pull em out and wait.

I definitly need to read up more on fungus. I don't eat em. Had a bad experience with mushrooms in high school and haven't been able to bring myself to eat them. But the kids and wife love them. And the go for between 50 and a hundred bucks a pound in Chicago which is only a few hours away.

About the slurry. I blended about a quarter pound of them and mixed them in a five gallon bucket with water a handful of salt and a couple cups of molasses. Though I've heard you can use any type of sugar.
 
countryboy said:
Thanks. Believe it or not, it's just a Fujifilm Finepix S 1500 10 megapixel digital camera with a 70.8mm built in lens. Not sure if it stores EXIF data. I don't know too much about manipulating images. I usually use GIMP, but only the easier functions.
Click to expand...

Fujifilm is the kind of camera I use myself. Nothing super fancy, but it cost a few hundred dollars new. Took tons of pictures out west back in 2009. I was compiling a folder of them on my profile here.

DSCF0492.jpg
 
Jade Dragon said:
Fujifilm is the kind of camera I use myself. Nothing super fancy, but it cost a few hundred dollars new. Took tons of pictures out west back in 2009. I was compiling a folder of them on my profile here.

View attachment 5289
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That's a great shot. Majestic scenery. I lived in the mountains of Northern California for a couple of years in the mid nineties. Beautiful country. That was before digital photography was really a thing though, I took some film pics, but nothing really great.
 
Thumper said:
I picked up a bunch of ash, elm and oak chips and buried them in the spots where I spread the slurry. The back of my house faces south and has a two foot overhang off the foundation. Over the winter I raked up the leaves into the area and put up mesh. Early spring I pull em out and wait.

I definitly need to read up more on fungus. I don't eat em. Had a bad experience with mushrooms in high school and haven't been able to bring myself to eat them. But the kids and wife love them. And the go for between 50 and a hundred bucks a pound in Chicago which is only a few hours away.

About the slurry. I blended about a quarter pound of them and mixed them in a five gallon bucket with water a handful of salt and a couple cups of molasses. Though I've heard you can use any type of sugar.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'm going to try that slurry idea. I don't know how well yours will do once the wood chips have been decomposed. Since they're found near certain tree species, they might need them for the symbiosis. Do you have trees in the yard?

https://nature.mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/yellow-morel-common-morel

The chanterelles go for $25-50/lb up here in the frozen north at the farmer's markets. In Michigan you can take an intensive course on fungus and become a licensed forager. You don't need to be licensed to find them, only to sell them. I couldn't bear to sell mine. lol I sauteed them in a bit of butter till about half done, then packed them in half-point canning jars with the liquid and butter, and frozen them. Some mushrooms can be dried but the sources I looked at said that these turn bitter if dried.

Good luck, hope your little shroom farm takes off!
 
ThatOwlWoman said:
Thanks, I'm going to try that slurry idea. I don't know how well yours will do once the wood chips have been decomposed. Since they're found near certain tree species, they might need them for the symbiosis. Do you have trees in the yard?

https://nature.mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/yellow-morel-common-morel

The chanterelles go for $25-50/lb up here in the frozen north at the farmer's markets. In Michigan you can take an intensive course on fungus and become a licensed forager. You don't need to be licensed to find them, only to sell them. I couldn't bear to sell mine. lol I sauteed them in a bit of butter till about half done, then packed them in half-point canning jars with the liquid and butter, and frozen them. Some mushrooms can be dried but the sources I looked at said that these turn bitter if dried.

Good luck, hope your little shroom farm takes off!
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Yeah. No trees in this yard. Ya have to take a course to sell morels here as well. It's really a crap course. I taught the same material to my kids in about ten minutes. IMHO just another way for government to worm it's way into things under the guise of safety.

I'll read up on the link after I sleep.

Morels here are typically found around dead or dying trees of the type I mentioned when I talked about the woodchips i buried. As for the chips decomposing. I plan on being out of this house and on my land before I need to worry about that.
 
Thumper said:
Yeah. No trees in this yard. Ya have to take a course to sell morels here as well. It's really a crap course. I taught the same material to my kids in about ten minutes. IMHO just another way for government to worm it's way into things under the guise of safety.

I'll read up on the link after I sleep.

Morels here are typically found around dead or dying trees of the type I mentioned when I talked about the woodchips i buried. As for the chips decomposing. I plan on being out of this house and on my land before I need to worry about that.
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The course here is pretty intensive, looks like. I took a freebie mushroom ID course this summer with a friend. The two young guys teaching it handed out a flyer on the foraging course. Later on I looked it up when we got home. They also said that in Europe they have similar courses but they're even harder than the MI one.

Sleep well, catch you later on.
 
We *finally* got some winter.... temps in the teens/20s today, a bit of lake effect snow. Very blustery outside too. As evening drew on it was good to see our wildlife friends draw close to our castle for food and shelter from the north winds.
 
Help! We're trapped inside a snow globe! lol

NU9cMi4.jpg
 
Thanks! And then... poof! .... the sun came out. Lake effect snow is fun. It will completely blank out the windows at times, then a few minutes later, the sun comes out. We can watch the bands march across the lake, then another white-out. Rinse, repeat. It goes on sometimes the entire day (Or night). We'll end up with several inches at a time, in little increments. If you look at the horizon in this photo, you can see a band approaching.... it's the fuzzy foggy-looking edge to the lake.

9jRxKwT.jpg
 
Making homemade soap, and baked goods for the family, and a friend or two this Christmas. Anyone can ask Owls if I end up doing a good job or not. Anyone else making their gifts this year?
 
Jade Dragon said:
Making homemade soap, and baked goods for the family, and a friend or two this Christmas. Anyone can ask Owls if I end up doing a good job or not. Anyone else making their gifts this year?
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I sent out cookies in the present packages to all the kids/g-kids. For Yule (next Thursday) we're having the neighbors over for prime rib! Looking forward to my surprise from you!
 
christiefan915 said:
^ That is so beautiful!
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It is, until you have to drive in it. Tuesday and Wednesday night took me 2 1/2 hours to drive home from work. Should've been about an hour and fifteen minutes. :/

But it is beautiful if you don't have anywhere to go.

On a bright note, the older four wheeler I bought this summer plows snow like a champ. :D
 
countryboy said:
It is, until you have to drive in it. Tuesday and Wednesday night took me 2 1/2 hours to drive home from work. Should've been about an hour and fifteen minutes. :/

But it is beautiful if you don't have anywhere to go.

On a bright note, the older four wheeler I bought this summer plows snow like a champ. :D
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Up in Michigan they have some seriously dedicated road crew for winter. Most my family lives around Dayton, OH. They never come up this way for winter, until they had to. They were actually amazed by how clear everything was, despite having a Blizzard a few days earlier. On the other hand, back in 2000, we were down in Ohio, and they got a decent amount of snow. It was nuts. People sliding around, crawling along. No one was prepared.
 
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