Chaga

 

 Upper right is typical black charred look of  the outside of a chaga conk.

The chaga conk, Inonotus obliquus, that part of the mushroom we see, is not the fruiting body of  the mushroom but rather a breaking out and hardening of the mycelium. Occurring mostly on  living birch trees, the conk  looks like a stub branch that is charred or like a black wart. The actual fruiting body is very seldom seen and usually occurs after the tree has died.
  Gathering chaga often requires a hatchet to remove the conk from the tree. They can be fairly large, twenty pounds is not unheard of, ten to fifteen pounds being common. The inside should  be a light reddish or yellowish brown, more or less the color of the birch trees cambium layer and sometimes streaked with white. It is believed that the chaga conk concentrates certain chemical compounds, including betulin, inotodiol, and active polysaccharides, from the birch tree. Betulin has been used to treat cancer in Russia since 1955.
   We add chaga to our teas as a antioxidant and for it's role as a immune system support.  It has a pleasant flavor reminiscent of cooking down maple sap. Don't make it to strong as it becomes bitter. We usually use it as a additive in our tea rather than the main ingredient but that's just us. We know several people who use it as their beverage of choice. We view it as another ounce of prevention. I have seen no reports of toxicity but as usual, all things in moderation.

Turkey Tail Mushroom

A turkey tail , typical color variations.

The turkey tail, Trametes versicolor,  is found through out North America and in many places around the globe. It may be the most widely studied medicinal mushroom in the world. It is very adaptable and grows in a variety of colors which accounts for the versicolor in it's name. This beautiful blue example was collected about 50 feet from our cabin.
  They have a very thin leathery flesh so they are usually used as a tea although some people will chew them as they stroll through the woods.  This mushroom is highly valued for being the natural source of the anticancer agent PSK. This mushroom is known in oriental medicine as Yun Zhi and is highly regarded. It is also considered to be an immune system modulator and is known as a powerful antioxidant.
    I have not found any reports of toxicity and so we add it too our teas occasionally. Would I spend big bucks to obtain it, probably not, unless I had been diagnosed with cancer. In our case it's an easy to obtain ounce of prevention.

Black Walnuts

Black walnuts after dehulling

  The foraging year is winding down here in north central Wisconsin but we still have lots to do. Ann found a neighbor with black walnuts covering their lawn. A short conversation with the owner lead to Ann spending several hours picking up almost six bushels of nuts.  After several days and a few evenings of removing the hulls, we now have very stained hands and about three and a half bushels of black walnuts. If you have never cracked black walnuts they are quite difficult. We use a hammer and a big block of firewood as a anvil! A little practice soon lets you control the force of your blow to crack the nut without smashing it. Even though they are tough we can produce clean nutmeats much faster than when cracking hazelnuts because of the size. Black walnuts have such a unique taste it is hard to decide what they go with. After some experimentation, Ann and I can recommend chocolate and maple syrup! Ann used them in a carrot cake which was very good. I am pushing for maple syrup fudge with them in it now. Today we had walnuts in our wild rice which was very good although I like hazel nuts better in my wild rice. Next year I'm hoping we can find butternuts. We found a few this year but only a handful. Unfortunately, there are few large mature butternuts around here because of a disease called butternut canker.

Shelled black walnuts

Cows and Cranberries

  Bella, the newest member of our homestead. We have milked cows and goats, both for our own use and commercially, over the years. For the last ten years or so we have just had goats. They are so much easier to handle and we think more economical for the homestead. The price of butter made us reevaluate that. While the goats we have been milking certainly produced enough butterfat to make butter making possible, separating cream from milk with goats is a difficult process. We have a separator, a 1940's Montgomery Ward Chief that holds 5 gallons at a time, it is just not worth the work it takes to clean up after running the milk through. If you were doing ten gallons or so it would be alright but when you are only milking a couple of goats it just isn't worth the effort. Which is why we now have a beautiful purebred Jersey cow. We simply let the cream rise in gallon jars and skim it off. Now we have to keep up with the butter making. We churn almost ever day with each churning producing about 1 1/2 pounds of butter. We don't pasteurize so care is needed to prevent our butter from going sour. The pigs certainly like the extra buttermilk they get in their food. Not sure yet that we will do with the extra milk after the pigs are in the freezer.

Two buckets of wild cranberries we picked yesterday.

On the foraging front wild cranberries have been a goal for several years. As the pic shows we were successful this year even if we were a bit late to get a lot of them. Wisconsin has two kinds of wild cranberries, large and small, that were both in the bogs we picked in. They both taste the same as cranberries you get in the store. Those are just a strain of the wild large cranberry that are cultivated. The pic below shows one of the bogs we picked in. This is a typical wild  cranberry bog.