I am a very happy man in Dubai this morning. My usual routine at the weekend includes a good hour or two looking at websites and a degree of yearning after being at home in Herefordshire with access to the wood. I will typically look at sites on gardening, woodland management. In order to try and solve a current fungal mystery I found this site called WildFoodUk. I think this morning I have really hit the jackpot. I wasn't sure the last time I was home but I am now convinced that will be self sufficient through each Autumn in wild mushrooms.
The last time I was at Oaklands Jane directed me to a huge patch or column even of mushrooms some of which were 15 cm across in their caps. It would be too much hope that they were edible and using the small book I currently have I kept hitting too many confusion species that were poisonous. It is really hard with a static picture page to reach any conclusion with confidence. What you need is experience and confidence and not just data. I am never willing to risk the stomach pump at A&E and when you hear that some mushrooms are "deadly" you proceed with caution. The rule is if there any doubt you don't chance it. In many respects that has backed me into my puffball corner all year !
The great thing about the WildFoodUk site is that there are links to videos like this transformative video here. Armed with this information, experience and confident appraisal of the situation I have safely concluded from 3,500 miles away that we are sitting on a fungi goldmine. We are proud possessors of a superb "troop" of Trooping Funnel mushrooms that should keep us in soup and porcini like goodness for many many years. I am really excited. While Jane is very cautious about my foraging antics (antic really to date) I think that a soup or risotto could be the way forward to settle the issue. I'll have to eat a chosen tasting dish and then observe my "humors" for 24 hours.
To be clear we have a 15-20 m long "Milky Way" of large edible mushrooms in the wood that apparently are some of the best eating mushrooms you can hope to get. I should be able to harvest, dry, store in oil and eat them for breakfast after every brisk Autumn morning walk. If I can forage a fair amount of food from the wood then my very odd self sufficiency dream can become a far richer reality. I don't have to plant, water and defend this food from every creature in the neighborhood. All I have to do is get out of bed and walk 300 m.
The other reason I am happy this morning is that I realise that Christmas is a little over 2 weeks away. Sam will be breaking up at school next week. Jane is flying home to collect him. Elliot is flying back to Birmingham from Thailand from his gap year teaching to spend about 10 days with us. He should be there already when I fly out on the 20th.
So surrounded by family I will be able to make stock and take stock. Looking back at all of our posts this year and my written diaries I understand how much we have achieved this year but also how we have just scratched the surface with Oaklands. It is not long now and the landscapers are coming in to lay out the first paths, areas of vegetable beds and patios. The very bones of the formal part of the garden should be completed by the end of the Spring. We have hardly owned the place for 9 months and I have spent myself just a a few short weeks snatched between "terms" of work in the Gulf. This Christmas it will be good to light the stove and wallow in plans for next year and the years to come.
For now and this morning I have sight of a second little cottage industry after my woodshed and stove in the form of bundles and bundles of wild mushrooms which are free and for the taking. It makes me wonder what else is tucked away around the corner and hidden for future discovery. More free food still there to be learned and collected into my toolbox of foraging experience. Happiness is free wild mushrooms.
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