Landscape Life

A dearth of fungi is part of the life of a forager. In terms of the shere amount of mushrooms to forage, process and eat, this summer was the opposite of last summer. Last summer the forests here were simply blanketed with black trumpets. They showed up everywhere with the wet soggy summer, in places I’d been for years and never seen them. They showed us that their mycelium is always there, just waiting for the rare perfect conditions.

Last year, In October, every other old oak wore a wreath of Maitake at its base. Zoe and I went out with our ponies, backpacks and saddle bags and found so many that we had to leave some behind. We are still eating our dried Maitake from last year. But this summer has been sad, at least to the extent that happiness depends on finding mushrooms. This fall, all through October I rode out to check the oaks that gave us last year’s abundance and didn’t find a single flowering hen. The black trumpets only showed up in the small reliable areas we keep secret.

Until this past week! Oh my. I’ve been out for hours this past week collecting both angle wing oysters and blue winter oysters. The blue oysters grow especially well on old logs over water. With the recent rain and cold weather, they are popping out all over. After so many treks that offered-up close nothing in terms of edible fungi, this sudden flush has been a joy.

The blue winter oysters are a meaty, moist mushroom that can survive and thrive in bitter cold weather. If you find them frozen, you can still cut them off and they are wonderfully fresh after thawing. Because of this quality, I decided to simply freeze the 30 plus pounds I’ve harvested so far. I put them in ziplock bags so we can simply pull a bag from the freezer when we want to cook with them.

The angle wing oysters are more delicate so I sautéed them in butter. They released their delicate yet earthy aroma as well as the water they held within them, making a thick buttery broth. We ate a big pot of this amazing mushroom soup last night with friends for Shabbat dinner and I froze the other 30 plus pounds of concentrated mushroom broth to use through the winter, spring and early summer. This, along with what I find in the next month, will last until we see what next season offers.

So, for now, I’m off on my pony with my dogs to see what I can find today!

Hola todas! Zoe Weizenbaum here. I have just returned from a six-week adventure in Spain! For the first two weeks I worked on a farm in Andalucia and for the month after I hiked one of the many famous pilgrimage routes that culminate in Santiago De Compostela.

In my final days of walking, crossing through the green pastures of Galicia, I came across many small farmers preparing their personal gardens for the coming season. Unlike our garden, which is full of all types of vegetables, they mostly grow greens for a specific soup called ‘Caldo Galego’. Similar to what I’ve learned to do back home however, they also prepare the soil with a healthy layer of ‘poopy mulch’. The smell of sheep and goat manure mixed with decomposing hay that followed me in the last stretch to Santiago made me feel right at home in the Galician countryside. It also inspired an extra quickness in my step as I thought about getting back home to the states and starting to work on our garden.

And now I’m home. I write this blog post staring out the window of my mom’s office. Our very pregnant goats are waddling around the chicken coop sniffing around for bits of bird feed left behind. The horses are close to the barn, using the structure as a windbreak as they take their mid-morning standing nap. The ducks and sheep are mostly out of sight, each busy getting their needs met in further off parts of the pasture and the chickens are taking advantage of the dust bath areas and laying boxes inside the barn. It’s a busy family we’re growing here and I’m happy to return to my place in it.

But what exactly is my place here on the farm? Since coming home from Taiwan in the summer of 2017 I’ve thought about this question a lot. I’ve been inspired by the potential I see here and have put in a lot of work in the past year a half. At the same time, I’ve also felt hesitant to fully commit myself. I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of work this place requires but also haven’t even been clear on what direction to take that work. My time walking the Camino has given me plenty of time to consider this and some clear direction is starting to form. And….here comes the announcement!

In my journey to learn more about homesteading over the past year and a half, I have accumulated a hefty contact list of local farmers/guerilla gardeners/permaculturalists/DIY professionals. They have offered their mentorship to me with such enthusiasm and… now they’re offering it to you! Starting in April and continuing all the way into November, Ancient Ponies Farm is hosting a series of workshops on permaculture and homesteading skills. Learn how to build a clay oven with Northampton based bread maker, Sam Coates-Finke. Dive into the world of tree identification and care with naturalist Walker Korby! Visit www.ancientponiesfarm.org for more information on our offerings and to sign up for classes! I’m so excited for this and the many other new beginning that come with this season. Stay tuned for pictures of goat babies. We’re expecting to “kid out” at the end of this month!

Lumi is now 6 months old. Check out that face and the black eyeliner with white eyelashes…oh my! Yesterday I brought her to the bank with me. She is by far the most polite and calm dog of our bunch. She has started to live in the barn now and, in spite of the fact that she smells like sheep and horses, people love to come up to her and snuggle up. Her fur is still the softest since angora rabbits. It has been suggested that she would make a good therapy dog because she is so gentle. She did not even need to be trained not to jump up on people. She has seemed to intuit proper and respectful behavior. It is sort of a shame that she has to live in the barn.

One difficulty came up a few days ago: She was playing with the chickens. She does not seem to intuit good behavior in relation to them! I saw out my window that she had the white Araucana prostate and almost dead. I ran down to the barn and the poor bird seemed barely alive. Lumi’s saliva was all over the bird and had frozen, so picking her up, she was limp yet stiff and crunchy. I brought her into the house and made a place for her with some food and water. Meanwhile, I got out my e-collar and put it on Lumi. For the rest of the day, I did work at the window looking out into the paddock. Luckily the signal from the window to her collar worked from that distance. Whenever Lumi went near a chicken, she received a mild shock. She seemed so confused about the new electric forcefield the chickens seemed to have! It took her a while but soon she gave up harrassing them.

Then Lumi began playing with the sheep, which is exactly what we want and what it is in her nature to do. The sheep then wandered in their adorable little row down to the lower pasture. I am always nervous about the sheep leaving the safety of the barn area because of coyotes. If they are out there alone it seems inevitable that they will get picked off. But this time Lumi followed them! She stayed with them while they foraged for dry grasses beneath the snow. Yay! We got her just for this 4 months ago and it is so exciting to see this coming to fruition!

And meanwhile, in the house, I started to hear clucking and skittering noises. Our chicken, who happens to be a good layer of the prettiest blue eggs, was up and about and wanting to get out of the little vestibule she was in! I brought her back out to the barn and she has seemed good as new since.

I’ve seen this over and over….chickens can survive being stuck under a haybale for three days, being stepped on by a giant horse, and being intensely mouthed by an over playful dog. They are creatures of grit and gristle for sure.