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RE: This is Us...We are Eliana's Garden. Sharing, living, learning all things forest and homestead.
Thanks @dber! I hope we can become an active part of this growing community here, learning and sharing with other passionate homesteaders. Excited to be here and get engaged. I followed you!
And I you! I am also very happy to help out and collaborate wherever possible.
I should say I tend to hesitate to talk explicitly about edibility in discussing mushrooms on public forums - which is a conservative approach I also apply to my own foraging.
I often describe my opinions, knowledge and willingness to eat finds as a fluid rubric. There are a fairly large number of edible mushrooms I feel nearly certain I could identify - but my willingness to eat them is connected to the degree to which I require the sustenance. In normal life wild mushrooms are, essentialy, nutritionally superfluous, and so I almost never eat my finds.
I'd be glad to collaborate whenever possible as well! Let me know if you have any ideas. :)
Agreed that in today's modern convenient society it is not necessary to seek out sustenance from the wild. However, that's not saying that it isn't beneficial for us or an excellent way to get dietary needs without having to empty your pockets. Chicken of the wood here, for example, is typically found in large amounts and packs a powerful protein punch of 14g per 100g of of edible matter...that's a lot of protein for something that is not animal! Lot's of mushrooms are great nutritionally and medicinally. I'll be exploring some research into all that in future posts. Thanks for the great comments @dber!
One issue I always have is not only the identity of a given species, but the concern about the mushroom picking up local environmental toxins - is this something that professional foragers consider, or is the goal just to avoid obviously contaminated areas?
That is most certainly an issue!! When foraging ANYTHING one should take into consideration the possibility of absorbed toxins. It is also an issue to make sure wherever one is foraging it is legally allowed. Good rule of thumb is to never forage in areas sprayed with any type of fungicide, pesticide, herbicide, etc. No dump sites, brown sites, sprayed lawns, under powerlines, etc. We forage predominantly in private pristine forests. When I go knocking on doors for permission to forward something I've seen while passing by one of the first questions I ask is if they 'treat' their property/lawn/trees with anything. IMO anyone with any common sense will use it when it comes to this...then again it is common for people to spray their gardens and eat it anyway. :/ Thanks for bringing up a good point! That's another great post idea!!
Agreed! Lots of good stuff for you to talk about - sorry to be so actively commenting these last few hours - i'm just sitting around at work waiting for something to happen, with little luck :)
Ha ha! No worries, kids have been down with a crud so I've been indoors today for the most part. I've enjoyed the interactions! Hopefully we'll continue to connect!
welcome to STEEMIT, look forward to more of your mushroom foraging and other stories! :)
Thanks @alexpmorris! Many posts to come!