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RE: Maybe this will work

in #introduceyourself7 years ago (edited)

Thank you, it's really cool to be here. So much to learn.

It's a funny story actually but I'll save that for another post. I very much just wandered in it. We gather a variety of mushrooms and wild foods and it changes month to month. The most prolific mushrooms here are Oyster mushrooms - maybe 8-10 months out of the year. The rest seem to be of very short seasons: Morels in April, 5 kinds of Chanterelles in June & July, Chicken of the Woods in July and August, Hen of the Woods in September and October, Puffballs like the end of Spring and the start of Fall, as do the Lion's Mane and Bear's Head. We have successfully cultivated 2 kinds of shiitake and 5 kinds of oysters, Lion's Mane has been a challenge with very limited success, and Chicken and Hens were both total fails. We'll be adding more every year (will likely do some posts in a few weeks when we innoculate some white oak logs with Bear's Head spore-dowels. We also pick wild pawpaws, persimmons, black walnuts, blackberries, cat tails, fiddlehead ferns, and anything else that crosses the radar as food. The goal is to sustainably "gather" and leave enough for nature to keep doing it's thing at my father's land that was otherwise just growing a little hay and a lot of poison ivy and ticks (not "forage" - ie: rape the forest of everything). The hobby quickly turned in to a cottage business when some of my clients in the restaurant industry showed an overwhelming interest.