Reed's 10th Birthday

Grandson Reed is now ten years old and his father made him a special birthday gift to celebrate his first decade. Since Reed is starting to go hunting, his dad made him a hunting knife.

Not only is this Reed's first knife, this is the first knife that his dad ever made.

There was a small gathering to celebrate Reed's birthday. The birthday cake was Reed's favorite, cheesecake.

Fairy Rings

While looking for edible mushrooms I found several "Fairy Rings" in the woods behind our house. A fairy ring, also known as fairy circle, is a naturally occurring ring or arc of mushrooms.

Fairy rings are caused by fungi that feed on decaying organic matter (e.g., tree stumps, logs, leaves or roots) buried in the soil. Growth of fairy ring fungi begins in the center of the ring, expanding outward in a relatively uniform, circular pattern. Fairy rings can grow and reappear at the same location for years. The circle will start off small in size, getting bigger as it gets older.

The fairy rings I found were caused by strict coral mushrooms (Ramaria stricta), also known as upright coral.

West Hill Bears

Checking the game cameras at our West Hill property this weekend. It's not unusual for me to get bear photos with game cameras, but this time a bear cub had ear tags. This game camera is located a short distance from homes and corn fields. The ear tags indicate the bear cub had been trapped, most likely for being a nuisance bear around homes.

The bear cub was traveling with a much larger bear that must have been its mother. Mother bears will travel a home range of 6 to 15 square miles teaching their cubs where to find food sources, such as bird feeders, corn fields and apple orchards.

The Velvet is Off

During the summer I've been documenting the development of a yearling buck's first set of antlers. It was easy to identify this young buck due to a notch on his right ear. As a deer's antlers develop a soft, furry skin, known as velvet, supplies oxygen and nutrients for the antler growth. Here's a photo of the velvet covered antlers from late August.

In late summer/early autumn the blood flow to the velvet stops and causes the velvet to dry and start to peel away. This photo show the velvet cracking and starting to shed.

A day later and all the velvet was shed and the new antlers revealed. This buck has also shed his reddish summer coat and now has his dark brown winter coat.

Walnut Caterpillars

I noticed a large, white, fuzzy mass at the base of a walnut tree at our barn. The fussy mass was a grathering of walnut caterpillars (Datana integerrima) as they molt to shed their exoskeletons and leave behind a dense, fur-like clump of discarded hairy skins.

Some of the walnut caterpillars in the process of molting their hairy exoskeletons.

Firewood

As we move into the fall, the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting cooler. It's time to prepare for the winter heating season by stockpiling firewood. The emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) has killed a lot of my trees, so I have a lot of dead trees to convert into firewood. I gather the trees during the year and store them near our barn where I cut them to length for the wood stove and split them with a hydraulic wood splitter.

Once the wood is split, it is stacked on pallets to keep the firewood off the ground and let it air dry.

I transport pallets of firewood to our house as needed using pallet forks on a tractor.

Blue Mushrooms

This summer's changing weather has made foraging wild edible mushrooms difficult. The hot/dry conditions in the early summer slowed or reduced mushroom gathering. The current late summer/early fall rains have restarted some mushrooms and I'm starting to find some nice Indigo milk cap (Lactarius indigo) "Blue Mushrooms". The indigo milk cap is a blue or blue-gray mushroom that exudes a dark blue milk when cut or damaged.

Indigo milk cap mushrooms are edible and we cooked these in butter, along with a couple of chanterelle mushrooms I found.

( Don’t eat any wild mushrooms without first checking with a local expert)