sweasel.com

Points to anyone who recognizes the title.

I’m not sure what kind of points.

Grow-up-and-get-a-life points, perhaps.

Ren & Stimpy!!

Yeah, I have no life.

Growing “wild” stuff unwildly is wildly hard. I have no idea why that is though. Good luck!

Oh, well done, Mitchell.

I am way too late. The log song is my favorite. The survival instructors in the AF always want you to be extra careful with shrooms. Many are poisonous, they are hard to identify, and offer little nutritional value (except some vitamins and minerals). But the good ones taste so good especially on a pizza or burger.

Ha! Did you see the Mystery Science Theater version of Mitchell? I laughed my hiney off.

And congratulations Stoaty, I think you’re way cool 🙂

No, I somehow managed to miss that particular one Lipstick. I’ma gonna have to find that one now though.

I’m fortunate. Our local greenmarket has a vendor with MANY varieties of cultivated wild mushrooms (OXYMORON ALERT!) for sale. Otherwise, no doubt, mushroom kits would join the various vinegar crocks and barrels, the pasta roller & drying rack, the canner and canning jars, the sauerkraut cutter and crock, the. . .OK, I’ll spare you the rest. I REALLY need to start getting rid of stuff before it all turns on me!

See, the way to grow wild stuff is to stick in the ground, then after about 2 years of not giving a shit you see if its still there. May or may not take over your yard and begin growing up your house….

You’d recognise our place, Can’t Hark 😉

Hey, I even have a NatureMill kitchen composter! Not to mention two Happy Farmer Bokashi compost containers. And. . .and. . .and. . .
Having just done the “help mother transfer from Independent Living Facility to Assisted Living Facility” thing (meaning that you know who got to do all the packing and getting rid of stuff) I am now in acute “get rid of it!” mode in my own home. Don’t suppose you’d like any of the fancy stuff mentioned in the above post? We can dicker on who pays the transatlantic shipping charges. . .
{eyeroll!} {Only about half kidding}

Actually, that offer is open to ANYONE. . .but it would involve exchanging e-mail information at the very least. Sigh. Back to Freecycle.org!

It all sounds like grand fun to me, Hark! I’m still in the accumulating mode–I’ve spent so much of my life too broke to do so, so I’m having way too much fun with hobbies and such to stop just yet.

I’d love to play on growing some ‘shrooms, except that it doesn’t seem like it makes sense given that I really do not like them AT ALL.

Nina, I’m just hoping to get things to the point where I know what hobbies I want to pursue, and have the space, time and energy to pursue them. Want a pasta roller?

The whole idea of harvesting wild mushrooms is rather interesting, but you really need to know what you are doing. The wrong shrooms can have you seeing polka-dotted grizzly bears while your heart shakes itself apart.

They did a bit on it on Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, and it was rather impressive what you can do with the different varieties of wild mushrooms available for anyone who knows what they are up to…

That is one bizarre-looking mushroom, Stoaty. I’m reminded of Little Shop of Horrors. 🙂

Hark, I actually use a pasta machine all the time, but not for pasta. 🙂

http://www.michaels.com/Tips-and-Techniques-For-Using-Your-Pasta-Machine/as0135,default,pg.html

I tried that once with Shiitake mushrooms. I cut down a small oak. The log drilling was quite an unpleasant chore. I made a small stack of logs down by the creek and then forgot about them for about 6 months and then I remembered them on a walk one day and there they were, ready for picking. So I harvested some, brought them home and noticed they were infested with some type of worm in the gills. Washed out the worms and fried them up. They weren’t very good. Didn’t bother to pick any more.

What makes a smallholder a smallholder?

Hm. Per the Domesday Book a smallholder is a “Middle class of peasant, usually with more land than a cottager but less than a villager.”

These days, it would be someone with more than an allotment, but less than a full-sized, fully functional farm. Whatever that is. A smallholder might specialize in pigs or apples or might just bump along with a bit of a farm stand and another job on the side.

There may be a real, technical definition; the above is just an observation.

Oooo, I love cooking with shrooms. I don’t have the balls to try the wild varieties. Let us know how it goes.

We had a huge fairy ring pop up in one of the pastures a few years back. Huge caps! Never seen it again since.

Og asks:

What makes a smallholder a smallholder?

and Weasel answers:

A smallholder might specialize in pigs or apples or might just bump along with a bit of a farm stand and another job on the side.

which is a very good technical description of its own right.

I suppose I will refrain from adding my own definitions, since they are unlikely to elucidate the meaning more clearly for Og, and in fact would likely obfuscate the vocabulary immensely. No matter how much fun that appears it might be at the moment.

/There now, does I gets pointz fer restraints, huh, huh, can I pleez? 😉

Hmmm. Seems like a lucrative racket. Sell a bunch of people some wooden pegs and a drill bit (the pegs have spooors on ’em, wink, wink)and tell them to cut down a tree and pound the pegs into it and then leave it out in the back forty. If it hasn’t worked in 18 MONTHS (!) come back and see me. Heh.
The Wild Turkey I can find, and it would be the main reason that I wouldn’t be able to remember or find (if the errant thought ever did return)the resultant rotten log.I suspect if you ever get past all that and return to Jeppetto’s (sp?) workshop, he’d tell you to “give it another 6 months”.
On the other hand, the chickens seem to be working out.

Dennis –

What a cynic. I suppose next you’re going to try and tell me that the magic beans I traded the cow for aren’t really magic.

You just wait 18 months!!!!

Our survival instructor said, “When in doubt, watch a rabbit. Anything he eats will be safe for you to eat, *except* wild mushrooms. They can eat ‘shrooms that’ll kill you.”

I asked, “Instead of watching the rabbit eat, why wouldn’t I just kill and eat *it*?”

Shoulda seen the look he gave me…

Totally off the “How to make mushrooms with nothing but a hammer and a freshly cut log” topic….

I hereby hijack this thread and turn it into the “Yes, fun fact of the day: A favorite snack for chickens is apparently a bowl full of stink bugs.” topic

http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/09/22/beyond-bed-bugs-stink-bugs-seize-hold-of-mid-atlantic-states/

And just how does a stinkbug diet affect the flavor of the Barbie’s Dreamhouse” sized eggie wegs that are merrily popping out of Lucia’s egg hole?

I am certain that inquiring stoats and weasels want to know…

Bill: I doubt that he was expecting a student to think logically. OR he was a bunnyhugger, and was trying to kill you with the lasers in his eyes….. 😉

My sister was a smallholder. or market gardener to be more accurate. It’s amazing how much produce you can get off two acres if it’s intensively enough cultivated. Back-breaking work, though (try hand-picking a ton of runner beans or pricking out 25,000 pansy seedlings.)

It’s true, Dennis. It can take as long as 18 months, which is plenty of time to put distance between yourself and the mark.

Naw, I threw him off his pace, Scoob. His previous block was “field-expedient hunting weapons” and we wrapped him around the axle by getting into a discussion about whether a prussic hitch or a square knot was best for making nets.

Never schedule guys who taught SERE to attend a weekend Basic Survival Course…

Mushrooms? Look here.
http://www.thompson-morgan.com/dispatcher?search=mushroom
I used freshly cut beech logs (actually 6′ lengths of big branches taken from trees in a local managed estate) The Shiitake are phenomenal.
How to grow your own field mushrooms.
Get about 200-300 pounds weight of fresh or semi-fresh (i.e. not yet rotting, you want anaerobic rot for the heat it generates) horse manure and tip it into a prepared pit at least 2′ deep, cover with 2-3″ of sterile potting soil (a couple of bags from the local Garden Centre should suffice). Cover and leave for 2-3 months, planting should be in early Spring. To plant, buy some BIG, open-cap field mushrooms, chop finely and dig into the horse manure under the potting soil. Keep the plot moist but not sodden, keep protected from the weather but not close-covered. Do not water when the fruiting bodies (the mushrooms) appear (3-4 months) otherwise they’ll go slimy. Cut an inch below soil level when mushrooms are the size you like. Enjoy!
The plot will produce 2-3 times a year for 3-4 years.

Re: SERE, in Africa we were taught to watch the baboons and the vervet monkeys to see what they ate. If they ate it, then so could we, including all the various insects etc!
If all else failed we could always eat the baboon or monkey!