Fall Colors And Fairy Rings

Fall is my second favorite season, spring is by far the best season, in my opinion. There is something about fall that makes me happy. It reminds me of pumpkins, jumping into giant leaf piles and Harry Potter marathons. Not only is the forest around us turning beautiful shades of red and orange, our perennial plants are giving us a show.

Hazelnuts turn a wonderful yellow-orange in fall. I thought we were going to get at least three hazelnuts this year, but the squirrel farm in our oak trees has seen to that. It's okay though, I know we will always have dinner for at least a week with our self sufficient squirrel colony. 

Blueberry leaves turn a dark red in the fall. I think we are up to 13 blueberry plants now. The key is to get them ripe before the birds have at them. I saw a cardinal come day after day and eat our ripe blueberries this year. Once these plants get big and bush out I won't mind sharing a little with the local wildlife. 

Here is the Russian mulberry I planted last summer. It has quadrupled in size in just over one year. The leaves are just starting to turn. They look like they are variegated. I can't wait for this tree to get taller than me and produce a ton of berries for my future chickens and or my wine operation.

I have not identified these mushrooms yet. They are completely ringing one of my white pine trees. It reminds me of a fairy ring. And no, I am not going all hippy on you, a fairy ring / circle is a real phenomenon, check it out here. I should go out and do a spore print. I am sure they are not edible, but I would like to know what they are.

They are seriously everywhere around the white pine. I wonder if it has anything to do with the large amount of straw I have had next to the pine for a couple years. The mushrooms are no where else on the property. Any guesses as to what they are?

Wild Dinner

So I finally had a successful hunting trip. The ironic thing is, I went into the woods to pick some wild mushrooms I saw on my last fruitless hunting trip and brought the .22 along "just in case". The one time I wasn't really hunting squirrel I got lucky. 

These wild mushrooms are giant puffballs (Calvatia gigantea). They are easy to positively I.D. as they have very distinctive characteristics and no dangerous look-a-likes once they get past a certain size. Please do not use my description as a field guide. Please do your own research and consult at least three different sources when you positively I.D. any wild mushrooms. If you are not 100% sure of the mushroom you have, throw it away. Remember "There are old mushroom hunters, there are bold mushroom hunters - but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters!." 

This squirrel is a Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis ). These squirrels are very common and prolific in my area. They have two litters a year producing anywhere from 4 to 16 young a year. They are ready to breed at 5 1/2 months. This one was barking at me about 120 feet up in a shag bark hickory tree.

Here is the giant puffball cut up. People use it as a tofu substitute others bread it and fry it. I chose to saute it with butter and salt. I used the smaller one since it was firm, the larger puffball was starting to go to spore and was soft. Side note, when these mushrooms go to spore they produce several trillion spores!

Here is our wild dinner. Sauteed squirrel with giant puffball mushroom and red onion. It was very tasty and rich. I used a little more butter than I should have do to the mushrooms soaking it up. The squirrel was a little chewy but the flavor was great. The mushrooms are better and tastier than tofu!

Homestead Update

Its been a while since I walked the property and took pictures. Here a few images from around the yard and garden. These pics were taken with my cell phone so I apologize for the poor quality. I find if I take pics with the cell phone I do more posts because its easier. It's a trade off.

In the center are our beach roses "rosa rugosa". The purple / pink are the flowers and the red you see are the rose hips. These roses produce one of the largest rose hips of all roses, full of vitamin C.

Here is whats left of our corn. A squirrel came in the day after I planted and dug up close to half of the corn I planted. Squirrel season starts Sept 1st, my corn should be ready towards the middle of Sept..... squirrel corn stew?

I planted over a hundred pole beans yesterday. The left row is a green bean and the right row is scarlet runner bean. We plan on canning a bunch in Sept.

Here is the compost / raised bed / volunteer plant nursery. We got our first ripe tomatoes of the year from volunteers that came up in the compost pile. The raised bed in the foreground has spinach, various herbs and okra planted in it. 

Here are my cascade hops. I was very busy with school when these came up in the early spring. I did not string them up right away so they did not grow to their potential this season. 

Once you plant borage you never need to plant again. Half of this raised bed is full of beautiful blue flowering borage. The flowers are so good. I eat a handful everyday I am in the garden.

This is the horseradish. It is doing very well. I want to split and move half of it to another location in the garden soon. I dug some up earlier this year, the flavor is amazing!

We still have 6-7 heads of cabbage getting bigger and bigger. I just planted a variety that gets up to 10 pound heads.

Here are some peppers. The peppers I start from seed always start out slow but once they hit the heat of summer they go crazy. 

All the stakes along the fence have a tomato I started from seed staked up to it. The tall sunflower looking plants on the right are Jerusalem artichokes. I can't wait to harvest them in the fall.

Here is the asparagus patch. I have been very good and have only eaten one spear over the last two years. This coming spring will be year three and we will be enjoying fresh asparagus for a few weeks.

Here is a shot of the garden. I finally got all the straw down after a storm coming in and blowing my hard work all over the yard.

I have upgraded the arrow target. The round bale was to short and we lost a couple arrows over the top.