Amazing

I took advantage of the break in the weather to use my new cross-country skis on the groomed trails at Laurel Ridge State Park. The new skis and boots worked great and were a joy to use.. The weather was great. The snow was perfect and there was adequate snow cover over the whole trail. I was surprised to find a spring, near the trail, with flowing water. I had expected the deep freeze to lock everything up.

I found myself looking at the trees and up and down each of the hollows wondering what kinds of mushrooms might be sleeping under the snow. I find myself doing the same thing when I'm riding in the car. Once the leaves are gone from trees you can see deep into the woods and all sorts of interesting possibilities present themselves.

One year I was over eager to get started on exploring and headed into the woods only to sink waist deep into the snow wedged into the fork of a branch of a tree. Exploring the woods in deep snow is probably best done on snowshoes.

There are safer things to do while we're waiting for the first mushrooms to make their appearance. We've been talking among ourselves about the number of mushrooms our members can identify. I made a list of those that I can identify but it gets fuzzy because I'm content to identify a mushroom as a group and leave it as that. If it's an amanita then I don't worry about which one it is. I just leave it where it is. Morels start out as true or false and then I go from there. Every once in a while I pull out the books and do a bit of research but I really do my best learning hands on.

Originally I sat down with Gary Lincoff's Audubon Field Guide, thumbed thru the photos and made of list of mushrooms which I am familiar, comfortable (to some degree) and able to identify in the wild. The list does not give me much in the way of bragging rights but just assembling the list helped to highlight my identification strengths and weaknesses. Identifying mushroom from photographs is a tricky proposition but it was a good tool for jogging the memory. I did not include mushrooms that I had seen or heard about at club functions only those that I had seen or gathered myself and felt comfortable with the identification.

by Joe  Contact Me

Ice age morels

I finally managed to test out my new cross country skis in the field behind my house. My yard is only a patchwork of snow, but the near edge of the field is holding enough snow to try out the skis. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to get up to Laurel Ridge and try them out on groomed trails.

The fact that there is not much snow to provide an insulating blanket makes me wonder where the frost line is. If I had one of those small garden augers I check it out but I'm not about to try it with a garden spade. There is not much snow cover near the well and so far the water has been flowing nicely.

I remember reading that morels originated during the last Ice Age and that they are programmed genetically to fruit during the thaw after a deep freeze. This week's cold spell and lack of snow are pushing the frost line down and a snow accumulation next week would keep it there. Could be a good year for morels. But then everyone likes to think that. I wonder what effect the deep freeze will have on the summer and fall mushrooms?

by Joe  Contact Me

Mushroomer?

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr........

Watch what you wish for. It was nice to have the weather take a dip into the pool of seasonal norms but it's flipped from what I was hoping for. There's been too little snow and too much cold for me to get any use out of my new cross country skis. I'm a bit surprised about all of whoopla about the cold. I remember longer stretches of very cold weather including the year that we had a -30 degree day followed by a -20 degree day. The well froze up on the -20 degree day but everything worked fine at -30. And then there was the time when we were snowed in for four days, but that's another story.

Our fireplace goes a long way in warding off the chill and I had the foresight to bring in enough wood to last thru the worst of the cold weather. Now I've burned up almost all of it, even the stuff that was growing some small white polypores. And, that's about as close as I've gotten to anything other the mushrooms on pizza a while. So, when the weather eases up it's back to the wheelbarrow and the splitting maul to replenish our cache. Perhaps after I've tested my new skis.

However, I have begun to get some use out of my other Christmas toy, a knife sharpener. Every mushroomer needs a sharp knife that will hold its edge under rough use. The trick to having that good sharp edge is to maintain the proper angle while sharpening. The rule of thumb is to thin down the blade. Be aggressive get the angle down below 20-degrees. Once I get a burr on one side, I turn the blade and repeat the process. Then I increase the angle slightly and use a fine hone or ceramic rod to put the final edge on the knife. I try to keep the blade under a 25-degree angle to the fine hone for the cutting edge. Once that's done I only have to touch it up with the sharpening steel.

My new sharpener clamps the knife and allows the hone to float over the blade at a fixed angle. I began to sharpen my favorite mushrooming knife and I realized that I had not been aggressive enough in thinning the blade. So it's back to square one tomorrow to do some serious metal removal before I can work on the cutting edge itself.

Did you know that mushroomer is not a dictionary word? So what do we call ourselves?

by Joe  Contact Me