Forage Friday – LLOYD'S LENS PHOTOGRAPHY LLC

Forage Friday #134 Alternative Products From Mushrooms

Hello Friends! Tonight’s Feature Image is titled “Polypore Mushroom 110221a” and is available for purchase by clicking the thumbnail and reaching out to me on the contact page.

Always be extra cautious about mushrooms. Even though tonight’s post isn’t about food or medicinal values there’s always an outside chance that someone somewhere could have a negative reaction to handling certain fungi. Most fungi are still very much alive when you bring them into your home so be prepared to deal with spores.

Tonight’s Forage Friday post is going to be a little different. Often in the cold seasons I find myself facing the choice between suspending the Forage Friday posts or expanding the concept of foraging to something beyond food and medicine. Such is the case tonight. Earlier this year I resolved to learn more about the various mushrooms and fungi that seem to thrive in our mountains. When I took my insect and disease control courses in the 90s the focus wasn’t so much on the identification of individual mushrooms as much as it was identifying which ones helped the forest grow and which ones devalued timber. I was blessed to have one particular instructor that had a vast knowledge of mushrooms and was very willing to go deeper into which ones were edible and traditionally used as medicine etc. But for the most part we stuck to approved curriculum. However, he did manage to impress upon me that the phrase “forest products” doesn’t have to be limited to timber.

Trametes pubescens in the process of recycling a tree. Image can be purchased by clicking the photo and reaching out to me on the contact page.

When I wrote about Chaga and Turkey Tail Fungus my main focus was on the traditional Native American medicinal values. And I’ve been taking advantage of that knowledge lately. But as I became more interested in learning more about them I encountered a post that spoke about what to do with the mushrooms after the extracts have been made. As it turns out most of the mushrooms have more to offer than polyphenols and triterpines. The body of a fungus is made from a substance known as chitin. ( pronounced KY-tin). This substance very close molecularly to cellulose and can be used to make paper. Moreover, to make mushroom paper all you need is a blender, hot water and a screen to cure your paper. That’s it. No toxic chemicals to pollute the rivers and that’s my favorite part. Basically you simmer the leftover fungus until it’s soft enough to turn into a pulp with the blender and spread it on the screen to drain. Some of the people doing this recommended adding a little tissue paper to the mixture for cohesion and one lady suggested that cobwebs might make the mushrooms paper better. But the bottom line was its doable.

I began to think about trametes pubescens which is a close relative to Turkey Tail Fungus and doesn’t have a reputation for the medicinal values. But it’s cream colored and unless I miss my guess it just as prolific as Turkey Tail. Maybe more so. Aside from the obvious uses of paper for writing and as tissue I think it might make an excellent canvas for art. Mushroom fiber is pretty absorbent and should hold pigment very well.

As I pushed even further into the realm of mushrooms as an alternative substance for everyday needs I learned that some people have discovered that it also be made into a leather type product, a replacement for Styrofoam and plastic. Architects are even experimenting with turning fungus into a lightweight building material. Some of this has a way to go before it becomes practical but the way they do it is by growing the fungus in a mold and then curing it in an oven. In Appalachia we have a thriving forest industry that could easily expand beyond the expected lumber and make use of all the sawdust to grow many of the types of mushrooms used in these products. It could be a second harvest for us.

Unknown polypore covering a tree twenty feet in the air.

Of course we don’t really have to wait on the big industries to catch up. Many of the mushrooms can also be grown in lawn waste or even cornstocks and more. All you need is basement, garage or outbuilding and you have the whole internet to learn more.

Good night friends and be blessed throughout your days.

Announcement 2.0

For those who have been following me on Facebook and know of the struggle content providers have to get circulation from big tech I’ve been recommending for people to adopt MeWe as a social media platform. One of the problems I’ve run into on MeWe is that people don’t know how to navigate the platform. So to help with that I’ve created a permanent page on my website as a basic Basic Beginner’s Guide To MeWe I’ve tried to anticipate all basic questions there and You can bookmark the page to have as a reference and if you have any questions or suggestions don’t hesitate to contact me. I do still have a day job and I help admin several pages on both platforms so replies might be a little slow but I will answer you.

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Forage Friday #133 – Empty Bag Syndrome

Color Photography, Forage Friday

Hello Friends! Tonight’s Feature Image is titled “Disappointing Harvest 112721” and was taken specifically for Forage Friday. I certainly do recognize that it takes a very unique individual to purchase a photo of a rotten apple for decor. However there are many other photos found on my blog and all are my original work unless otherwise specified and are available for purchase by clicking the thumbnail and reaching out to me on the contact page.

The young man stood in the threshold staring at the empty table in the kitchen. He walked in and laid his empty bag in front of his family and in tears he lamented his failed efforts. His mother stepped over and sat down next to him. She softly placed her hand on the back of his neck and reassured him. He wasn’t a failure just because he came home one time empty handed. She stood him up and guided him to the root cellar. There the walls were lined with the bounty of past foraging and gardening. The family had all they needed after all.

It’s bound to happen eventually. The fisherman will miss a strike, the hunter will miss the shot and trapper will have his bait stolen. So we shouldn’t be surprised if a foraging excursion yields no prize either. Now as far as my Forage Friday posts goes there’s still plenty of nuts, and seeds that could be harvested around and quite a few mushrooms as well. However, I’ve not encountered anything lately that hasn’t already been been covered in previous posts. So tonight I’m going to share a few basic preservation techniques. For the sake of brevity I’m not going to go into specifics of each technique. But just to give you a few ideas that you might want to research.

Obviously there’s the canning of various things. Fruits and berries can be made into various preserves. Canning comes with a variety of advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that canning is generally reliable so long as you avoid conditions that might allow botulism. You can go to the USDA site which links to other resources for specific information about canning.

Forage Friday mostly covers herbs and one the easiest ways to preserve herbs is drying them. I prefer not to use heat if it’s not too humid. Back at the end of summer I found the need to trim the red elm in my yard. Left alone red elm gets huge. Up to 80 feet tall. But a tree this large in the location it’s growing isn’t really good since it poses a risk to my house. So I trimmed it back and plan to only allow it to get 15 -20 feet. This left me with an abundance of bark and leaves that both have medicinal values and tastes pretty close to store bought tea. But if you look closely at black tea from the store you’ll find that it’s not dehydrated to the point of being brittle. So I chose not to use heat and to simply spread the shredded leaves out in a single layer and allow a fan to circulate the air until the leaves had the same texture as the black tea I get from the store. ( If you have access to red elm I highly recommend trying the leaves as a tea substitute. )

Drying is by far my favorite method. Leaves are pretty easy to start with but eventually you’ll want to try a few roots. Dandelion, chicory, Japanese Knotweed and those that are truly roots can be thinly sliced and strung on a rack so that the air circulation can draw off the moisture. With thicker things like roots you’ll need to keep a constant eye out for mold. One of the reasons why I like using a fan is that air circulation helps mitigate mold.

Something that I hope to try eventually is to build a small vacuum chamber for freeze drying of fruits and vegetables. This will be a new experience for me but it’s my understanding that the vacuum chamber can successfully remove the moisture from the produce and it can then be frozen without changing the color or structure of the food. The device is about the size of a pressure canner. And to be clear this isn’t the same as industrial freeze drying. It’s just supposed to have the same result. It’s something that I’m still researching. The equipment is rather expensive but if it ever becomes a reality for me I’ll do a post on it specifically.

The last one for now is just simply flash freezing. Flash freezing is awesome for one big reason and that’s nutrients. One of the biggest reasons to either garden or forage is nutritional value. If your produce is shipped in from way off then it loses a lot of nutrients on its journey. Fresh vegetables and fruits are ( or should be) still alive when it hits the shelf. The food value is being consumed by the produce in order to maintain that life and thus the longer it is between harvest and consumption then the more nutrients are lost. However, if you harvest locally and quickly freeze it that stops the nutrients from being used by the produce itself. It’s also recommended that if you harvest wild nuts or tubers such as groundnut that you should freeze them for a few weeks to kill any worms that might be inside the shell.

Thats it for tonight’s Forage Friday. Good night friends and be blessed throughout your days.

Announcement 2.0

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Forage Friday #132 Box Elder

Color Photography, Forage Friday

Hello Friends! Tonight’s Feature Image is titled “Box Elder Keys 112021a” and was taken specifically for Forage Friday. All photos found on my website are my original work unless otherwise specified and are available for purchase by clicking the thumbnail and reaching out to me on the contact page.

Please remember that Forage Friday is presented as trivia and not to be mistaken for medical advice.

Cold hands run their fingers up and down the trunk of the tree searching for just the right place to make the cuts. The older man is talking to the tree as much as he is planning his next action. Once he’s found just the right spot he retrieves the stone axe from his belt. The polished Celt was hafted by making a shallow cut in the fork of a young tree and binding limbs together so that the handle grew to the perfect haft. The stone need not cut too deeply so he holds the head in place and instructs his grandson to tap firmly but gently on the back of the tool with a thick branch until they had a V shaped notch for the sap to flow into. A small chert point is twisted back and forth until a hole is drilled. A small piece of river cane is fitted to the hole. It’s split into two pieces that form a channel for the sap to flow through into a cone of birch bark that hangs on the tip of the tap. The grandfather then turns his attention to the small box elder saplings that are spread throughout the area. He carefully examined each one as he selected which ones to cut and which ones to keep. Nothing will go to waste. The inner bark of the saplings that were cut was collected for medicine. A pit was dug and small pieces of box elder were burned in the pit to make charcoal. Some of the charcoal would be set aside for tattoos and some for mixing with mud and bear fat to make a paint for camouflage. When the cones filled with sap they were emptied into a larger birch bark container and hot rocks were pulled from the fire pit and added to the sap until it was boiled down into a sweat syrup for making candy for his grandson.

Box elder is actually one of the maple trees. The scientific name is Acer Negundo and Acer is the maples. Acer is an old Celtic word for hard and for the maples we’re familiar with like sugar maples the wood can be very hard. But box elder doesn’t share that attribute. In fact the wood is very soft. I’ve been using box elder for small projects and the young twigs have a very soft and fairly large pith that’s pretty easy to remove making it useful as handles for small tools like my hand files and small knives. It carves pretty easy but can be stringy at times.

Where box elder comes into foraging is with the sap. Maple syrup can be made from maples other than sugar maple but you do need more sap and you need to evaporate it for a longer period of time in order to get the right concentration of sugar. I have sometimes wondered if anything could be done with the prolific seeds of box elder. The first problem is that they are extremely hard. Theoretically the small hard seeds could be made into a flour. The problem there is that while the sap is edible the seeds may contain a carcinogenic component that would only be concentrated in the flour. Now I have learned that the young leaves can either be powered, cooked like spinach or eaten raw. I might try some this spring.

The inner bark of a lot of trees is edible but box elder inner bark only has a history of medicinal value. Native Americans used it to treat respiratory issues, kidney infections swelling and paralysis. However, I haven’t yet uncovered the mechanism behind this use.

That’s it for tonight’s Forage Friday! Good night friends and be blessed throughout your days.

Announcement 2.0

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Forage Friday #131 Hen-Of-The-Wood

Color Photography, Forage Friday

Hello Friends! Tonight’s Feature Image is titled “Hen-Of-The-Woods 111321” and is available for purchase by clicking the thumbnail and reaching out to me on the contact page.

Please remember that Forage Friday is presented as trivia and not to be mistaken for medical advice. Furthermore, always be absolutely positive about the identity of any fungus that you intend to ingest. In the world of fungus you might only get one mistake. In full disclosure, I have way more experience with herbs and trees than I do fungi. Therefore you should seek other sources and learn more before foraging.

Thomas could hear his stomach growling loudly as strode the old path down to the river. In his belt he carried his hatchet with it’s wooden cover to protect the edge. He also carried long piece of river cane and a few fish hooks. The other hand held a hand woven basket. It wasn’t fancy. Just a few whips of slippery elm with an old rope for a handle. No intricate weaving patterns. Just a simple box that he could use to carry fish. In the Depression Era in Appalachia rubber was hard to come by so instead of Y shaped slingshot he had a simple Shepard’s sling and a few large pebbles. He already twn years old and felt that it was time for him to start helping to feed his brothers and sisters. But Thomas never made it to the river. Not today anyway. Today he spotted a huge pheasant roosted at the base of an old oak tree. Carefully he sat the pole and basket down on the trail and retrieved his sling. He played a golf ball sized stone in pocket and cast it Apache style. Just like his grandfather taught him. The rock torn a clean hole through the target but the target never moved. Thomas had fallen prey to his eyes playing tricks on him. His well placed shot had hit a huge mushroom. Thomas’s confusion was understandable. The polypore mushroom he saw looks so much like a bird that people call it “Hen-Of-The-Woods”. It may not have been the pheasant he’d hoped for but it was still a good find. The mushroom completely filled his basket and he took it home to his mother right away. Thomas and his mother prepared the mushroom together. The truth was that she’d spotted the fungus a few days ago and was planning to harvest it herself but she pretended to be surprised for Thomas. She was proud of him for wanting to step up and contribute. First she cut the white base from the main fruit body and washed them. Those she would set aside for making a broth to add to soups. They’re a little on the tough side but if she diced them and laid them out near the stove they’d dry up and be OK. The rest she simply cooked in her cast iron skillet with salt and pepper in the beech nut oil family had made a few days ago. Since Thomas was the who provided the meal he got to sit at the head of the table and say grace at dinner.

In the interest of full disclosure I am not positive about the identity of the mushroom in tonight’s Feature Image. I’m fairly certain that it’s Hen-Of-The-Woods but the photo is several years old and I can’t go back and double check.

Like a lot of wild edibles Hen-Of-The-Woods is rich in vitamins and minerals. It’s also a source of beta glucans that may help lower cholesterol.

In traditional Chinese medicine Hen-Of-The-Woods is thought to help modulate the immune system. The theory is that the fungus strengthens the immune system when it needs to be stimulated and but also holds the immune system back when it overreacts. The mechanisms of how this happens is better explained by by an expert so I’ll have to ask the readers that are interested to remember that my blog is primarily about the photos I take and that the Forage Friday posts are only intended to be a conversation starter.

Lastly, Hen-Of-The-Woods is not the same as Chicken-Of-The-Woods. Hen-Of-The-Woods is Grifola frondosa and Chicken-Of-The-Woods is Leatiporus sulphureus. Both are polypore mushrooms and have a similar appearance but are not the same.

Good night friends and be blessed throughout your days.

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To book me simply reach out using the Contact Page and we’ll set a date. If you’re within a 50 mile radius of Summersville West Virginia all travel fees are waived.

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Forage Friday #130 / Traveler Crossover. Blue Lobelia

Color Photography, Fiction Story, Forage Friday

Hello Friends! Tonight’s Feature Image is titled “Blue Lobelia 110621” and is available for purchase by clicking the thumbnail and reaching out to me on the contact page.

Please remember that Forage Friday is presented as trivia and not to be mistaken for medical advice.
⚠️ Lobelia contains a host of toxic alkaloids, including many with structural similarities to nicotine. Overdoses of the plant induce vomiting, sweating, pain, paralysis, low temperature, rapid but feeble pulse, collapse, coma, and even death.
“Blue Lobelia – CornellBotanicGardens” https://cornellbotanicgardens.org/plant/great-blue-lobelia/

Tonight I’m going to be blending two different categories on my blog. For the past week I’ve been running the Travler series which is set sometime after the Civil War but before the year 1900. Since one of the characters (Malachi) was a physician prior to returning to the life of a Trapper in the Appalachian Mountains he would have been familiar with vast number of useful herbs. Which allows me to continue the story without skipping a Forage Friday post.

Frost clung to Daniel’s wool cloak as the smell of coffee brewing in the pre-dawn forest aroused him from his slumber. He pushed back his hood slightly and saw Malachi seated on three thick sticks gathered from the forest floor. The sticks formed a low tripod and were laid out in such a way as that they supported each other while holding the big man aloft. Malachi hummed softly as he tended to his birch bark cooking pot that sat directly in the hot coals. “Breakfast is just about ready.” He spoke without even looking to see if Daniel reacted. Daniel couldn’t figure out how Malachi knew that he was awake. But in the short time since he met Malachi he sensed that Malachi was always aware of more than he let on. Malachi sat a hand carved cup on a flat rock next to a second tripod and motioned for Daniel to come and sit for breakfast. As Daniel sat precariously on the three sticks Malachi chuckled a little and handed him his own small birch bark pot full of breakfast soup. The single piece of bark was folded at the corners and the folds were held in place by split twigs. The soup consisted of a broth made from fresh gathered herbs and hen of the woods mushroom. The chicken flavored mushroom was a welcome change to the jerky and dried fruit that Daniel had subsided on for weeks. As he ate his meal he noticed a bundle of blue flowers near Malachi’s pack. Malachi observed Daniel’s curiosity and explained that it was Lobelia. Normally it would die back at this time of year but the heat from large rocks near the falls extended the growing season. It was Malachi’s belief that the Good Lord had caused them to be there in a time and place where they would be needed. Malachi also said that they could be used for breathing problems, to sweat out a cold, heal bruises and skin infections as well as to settle the nerves of anyone in Alexandra’s group who may be hysterical from the hardships of their journey.

Blue lobelia is a close relative of one of the Appalachian Mountains favorite wildflowers. The cardnial flower. Modern science suspects that lobelia may contain a chemical that thins the mucus and makes it easier to cough and expell congestion. Thus in the time frame that our story takes place it would have been used for asthma and other lung ailments. The Native Americans used it in treatment of VD. Because one of the components is similar to nicotine it was used as a wormer as well.

That’s it for tonight’s Forage Friday! Please let me know if you like the format of using fiction to cover the plant’s attributes. Good night friends and be blessed throughout your days.

Announcement 2.0

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Click the link below to jump to the Basic Beginner’s Guide To MeWe.https://lloydslensphotographyllc.com/guide-to-mewe/embed/#?secret=GJGnIQEVHc

Hey Friends! Just a quick reminder that Lloyds Lens Photography is available for portraits!

To book me simply reach out using the Contact Page and we’ll set a date. If you’re within a 50 mile radius of Summersville West Virginia all travel fees are waived.

If you’re enjoying my blog and don’t want to miss a post then you can sign up for email alerts on my website.

WELCOME TO LLOYD’S LENS PHOTOGRAPHY

WELCOME TO LLOYD’S LENS PHOTOGRAPHY.