Mushrooms of the Hay Bale

I have recently noticed some mushrooms occasionally growing from the hay bale we've been using to fill our garden beds. Around the third time they appeared I became interested in identifying them. Since then I've been searching madly, obsessed with my quest for answers. I have learned that mushroom identification is a tricky thing indeed, usually requiring a microscope and DNA testing for truly conclusive results. However, I feel that my diligence has adequately paid off for the time being. My study shall continue, with the help of some highly recommended books: Mushrooms Demystified and All That the Rain Promises and More, both by David Arora. For now, I bring you the Coprinus, commonly called an inky cap. I am as yet unsure of the species, but Coprinus fimetarius or Coprinus cinereus just feels right. It could just as well be wrong; further study is needed. I have had great difficulty finding helpful mushroom identification websites, so I expect to have better luck with books. Most websites devoted to the subject are more oriented to the most common edibles or the psychotropic varieties. It has been a bit frustrating. The sites that I finally found helpful are: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/ and http://www.svims.ca/

The catch to inky caps is that they are very short-lived. It rained yesterday, so I looked for them this morning. They were already reaching the end of their lifespan. Had it rained last night instead, I could have found much fresher specimens. The caps have turned to goo; the spores have spread. The End... this time around, anyway. Thanks to our friend, Jones, we have borrowed a swanky Nikon D3000; and we are able to take high quality pictures with clear detail.

The stem is delicate and hollow.

This is what you get from handling the caps: ink.

This is what happens when you try to take a spore print from an overly mature cap: a fine mess. The cap hasn't been removed but is curling up and dissolving.

The uses vary from one species to another. Obviously, an ink can be made from the caps. Some types are edible, although very mild in flavor. These don't smell mushroomy, but rather fresh, like dew. Some are edible, yet poisonous if mixed with alcohol, even up to three days after time of mushroom ingestion. Some have anti-tumor properties. Some may nutritionally enrich the medium in which they grow. I don't think any are deadly, as very few mushrooms truly are. But feeling sick can certainly outweigh any positive experience you may have upon tasting them. Don't eat something if you aren't certain what it is. I feel this to be universally wise advice.

Organic Pesticide

I've read that all the wonderful Paw Paw trees in our magical little hollow contain a natural and potent pesticide. Of course, the articles are about making extract in a lab with string solvents like industrial grade ethanol and such which, in my opinion, goes beyond what could be considered "organic". I have also read, however, that organic gardeners use the leaves, stems, twigs, and bark to make their own natural and effective pesticides.

What I can't find is any sort of recipe or anything on exactly how the hell they manage this.

The organic pesticide recipes I have found involve mainly capsaicin (the stuff that makes peppers and onions and such hot). In these recipes, you simply cut the ingredients up small, blend them into a paste, steep said paste in water for a bit, strain, add a bit of vegetable oil and a dash of dish soap to break up the surface tension of the water and there you are.

I figure this should work with the paw paw parts as well so that is what I'm trying. I intend to also make a capsaicin based solution as well and testing them against one another. I will post again in the future once I have some conclusive results.

UPDATE:

The first test of the organic pesticide; we found a spotted up leaf on one of our watermelons. Upon further inspection, we found a striped cucumber beetle just going to town on it. We filled a spray bottle with our paw paw leaf solution, gave it a spritz and WOW! the beetle didn't fall over and die or anything, but it DID start running around in circles and then jumped off the leaf, to be seen no more!

Planting Our Garden

Things are starting to come together.

Don't run off now...

I posted on how this place looks like a war zone. I've got my hands into clearing some stuff (and stocking the back of my shop building with firewood for the winter and then some) so posting has slowed to a halt, unfortunately.

However, we started planting our garden yesterday, and we're gonna go get some more plants today. I plan to take the camera up with us this evening and record a new video entry.

This blog is still very much alive. ALIVE I TELL YOU! *maniacal laughter*

Shantytown

We needed shade and this is what we had to work with. I explain all this in the video. I also repeat myself several times. I say the same thing a lot too. Also, my wife!


I'll get better at this eventually.

War-zone

(Photo Courtesy of Birmingham News, Mark Almond)

                                       
I just passed through one of the harder hit areas this morning. I had heard how bad that it was, even seen a few pictures. I thought that I was prepared and yet my jaw was in my lap the entire time as I drove. Traffic is still restricted to one lane, so I had plenty of time to go slow and just take it in.

Destroyed cars, homes in pieces, I even saw a brick house with the top half (not just the roof) ripped clean off. The civic center where many local schools had basketball tournaments and graduations was severely damaged, with daylight clearly visible all the way through the middle of it.

The Huddle House, which I would have thought to be a sturdy building, barely even qualified as a pile of rubble. Trees down by the dozens, power lines, and folks scurrying all over trying to put things to some semblance of right again. That was just the main street in Rainsville. I dared not venture down the side roads in the affected area.

Good on the people working hard to clean up and fix things, but it's gonna be a long time coming before anything is ever "normal" again. For some people, it never will be again.

Roughing it

Tornadoes ripped the hell out of the South East last Wednesday. We got off extremely easy. Our place was basically untouched by any of it. Many, many folks were not nearly so lucky. Some people lost their homes, or even worse, their families. For us,it was simply a matter of surviving a few days sans electricity.

The whole situation really wasn't so bad. I dug a small fire pit outside and ringed it with cinder blocks, scrounged up an old grill rack, gathered up a lot of fallen branches from around the property (that I should have cleaned up a long time ago), and just kept it burning for most of the time. We cooked as much as we could of the things we had in our fridge and freezer, plus some stuff my mom-in-law brought us from their damaged home as they headed for the safety of a hotel room in a nearby town. My wife even figured out how to make coffee for us! (Among other things.)

I never thought I could be sick of grilled meat, but there it is.

We even managed to cobble together a little canopy for shade out of stuff we had lying around. We took a little video of that which I hope to get edited and posted very shortly.

I kinda feel bad saying that we had a good time "camping" while so many other people were suffering but I can't help it. It felt good to test ourselves in that sort of situation and learn to make the best of things. We learned much about what we could live without, which was surprisingly a lot, also what we could and couldn't do with stuff we have lying around the place. It was a good trial run for becoming the self-sufficient people that we dream of becoming. The situation also gave birth to some intriguing ideas regarding sustainable green energy that I plan to explore in earnest very soon.

Even in the hardest of times, one can learn to make the best of what is at hand. If only free pallets and mimosa poles could bring back lost lives...