farming, Uncategorized

September 24, 2023 A Mushroom Walk and a Young Bear

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The woods are changing and moving into fall. Leaves are colorful and the forest is brighter. This is the North Trail where we startled a young bear. We think he was the 3 year old male bear our neighbor told us about. He looked healthy as he ran away. This was at the top of North Trail. No sign of his mother.

Tropical storm Ophelia moved through Saint Andrew’s Forest Farm with gusting winds and rain just the day before. As we drove over from Staunton, we saw several large trees blown over and wondered what impact the storm had on the trees at SAFF. As we pulled in, we did not see any downed trees only a few limbs on the ground.

A tree stump covered in Mycena haematopus, or common name, bleeding Mycena.
Saprobic mushrooms found on well decayed wood. They were lovely. Note the bleeding from the stem in the photo below.
Unknown polypore
Down by the waterway. It was cooler out and also muggy for our walk around.
A Russula
A new mushroom we spotted at the bottom of the clearing. It’s a yellow reishi, Ganoderma curtisii. It was as hard as wood and shiny. A magnificent find. These are a noted medicinal mushroom.
We saw multiple specimen of strawberry euonymus with these lovely berries.
We know birds eat these and wondered what the bear is eating. He looked well fed, about 150 pounds or more. A young black bear.

We hope we didn’t scare the young bear off. We want him to stay safe on our property from all of the hunters in the area. Next time we go out to SAFF, we will hang up more signs to alert hunters to stay off of our farm. We would like the wildlife to have a sanctuary.

Young loblolly pines

It is wonderful to have the cool weather to explore and get jobs done. We were able to mow and dig another footing for the shower and compost toilet structure.

Marasmius capillaris, growing on fallen oak leaves on the forest floor.

We also saw more of the Cranefly orchid’s leaves emerging along the trails all through the woods. We were able to clear hundreds more small stick trees using loppers.

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