My First Mushroom Hunt

My cultivation of oyster mushroom has paid off!

I went on my first mushroom hunt today.

I felt a little silly running around the woods like a kid in a candy store all on my lonesome, but that's what I was. A kid in a candy store (where candy means mushrooms and store means forest).

I can currently only identify two kinds of mushrooms: shiitakes and oysters. I gained this knowledge over the summer cultivating mushrooms at Herbal Turtle Farms. I was fairly sure that if I stuck to these two kinds of mushrooms I wouldn't poison anybody, but it was still no guarantee I was going to find anything edible. After all, I don't really know what grows here.

But the search was on!

I came across these on two dead logs.

These beauties are white oyster mushrooms.

Perhaps 'beauties' is the wrong term because they're awfully dirty and rain soaked, but I love them because I foraged them.

Now I can check wild mushroom hunting off my 'become a true mountain woman' list. It's a long list, but this is a delicious start.