an excess of enthusiasm

After spending all last year in an apartment while our house got rebuilt after the fire, we clearly had a year’s worth of pent-up enthusiasm for the yard, the woods, and the lake. So come spring, we hit the ground running. As of today, it’s official, we just completed our last major outdoor job for the time being and it was a doozy—dock repair. Among the long, long list of things we have been doing outside is “sporing mushrooms”. My husband and son have been slowly turning our property into an northern edible food forest using native species only. One such species is the Wine Cap mushroom. It is so easy to spore and grow, that I think it might be every budding mycologists gateway mushroom. We have grown them before; taste-wise they are good not great, but they dry beautifully and we like them in mushroom risotto in the winter. If you want to try sporing your own mushrooms, and haver a shady nook with wood chips—get yourself some wine caps! It really is quite fun.

wine cap mushrooms (Stropharia rugosoannulata)