UKC

How are things looking now we've moved into October?

I'm finding a bit of a resurgence of late-Summer greenery now we've had decent amounts of rain and some warmer temperatures.

There's a lot of Meadowsweet along the edges of the lanes here, and the Wood Sorrel is looking good too.

Tons of fungi, but not necessarily the species I expect. Where the bloody hell have all of the Chanterelles sodded off to? Plenty of Ceps and a few very good examples of Cauliflower. The Wood Ear is starting to fruit again too.

How is it looking in your corner?

I haven't found many yellow chanterelles, but yesterday was a great day for funnel chanterelles. I nearly got 1kg.

https://twitter.com/MikePeacock86/status/1048602597836378112

Not one here yet, even in my 3 'reliable' locations. Not jealous of your haul at all...

Shaggy ink caps have been extraordinary this year. Not had much luck with anything else fungal. Amazing brown roll rims but not chancing that one.

Ah, I know these as winter chanterelles. Been quite a bit of forestry work in the area I'd normally find them though.

We collected a load of acorns.  I discarded holed and split ones, boiled the rest for 15 minutes, shelled them, coarsly cut the nuts discarding any black bits, roasted them at 180oC for 30 mins, ground them in my spice grinder, roasted the power at 180oC for 20 mins. Shook half way through each roast.

Result: Acorn coffee.  I like it almost 50/50 with milk - it’s still quite bitter from tannin so maybe should have blanched for longer.

Three days ago I found blackberries, a bit overripe but still just about edible, on a sunny run in the Chilterns.

They just seem to grow everywhere here. Last year I was still picking them in November.

I haven't specifically been out for the purpose of foraging this autumn, but did spot some chanterelles from the car a couple of weeks ago near a wee hill we were going to.

We gathered enough to fill a Yorkshire Pudding each for the four of us, and also found a few hedgehog mushrooms and trumpet chanterelles (what we call the ones Mike Peacock's talking about!)

The chanterelles weren't the tastiest I've had, but they weren't bad. I suspect ones picked now might be soggy and runied, unless they're still coming up.

The hedgehog mushrooms and trumpet chanterelles went into a soup (trumpet chanterelles have great flavour for soups and stews, and are OK in pies, but they aren't anything like as good as 'proper' chanterelles for other stuff). They seem to grow very readily under pine, and I know loads of places to find them (and we find them a lot in Sweden too, right enough). It seems to me that the best years for them are not quite as good for chanterelles, and vice versa.

There's an abundance of sloes this autumn in Yorkshire, I picked 4 kg in about an hour over the weekend. A lot of country roads have turned purple in places with the amount of them. Quite good for damsons as well. 

Having a terrible time finding mushrooms where I live, although we found some ceps, hedgehogs and tawny grisettes last weekend on a guided walk in the New Forest, as well as a cauliflower fungus.

Had a lot of success with some roasted cobnut honey thoguh, which came from a tree on the way to the pub that the squirrels seem to have overlooked. Other than that it's mostly chestnuts and rosehips at the moment.

Edit - Forget to mention we have some sloes in the freezer waiting to be used for gin, or possibly jelly.

It's a bumper year for fly agarics. Saw more on a 4 mile run yesterday than I've seen for years. Haven't seen much in the way of edible fungi though

My son's got loads of Honey Fungus, has anyone eaten this? Can be dodgy for sensitive stomachs, I've heard.

Had a few Field Blewits - they're pleasant enough but not s good as field mushrooms

The Bullace gin is coming along nicely

Filled a couple of bin liners with wild hop bines that my mate and I spent several hours sorting. I've got them in the freezer now ready for green hop beer, but the brew kit is full of fermenting apple juice so I'll have to wait to brew with them. 

I was back in the Peak a few weeks back and saw quite a few bay boletes, ceps and a handful of chanterelles...and yes, literally hundreds of amanita muscaria.  A spot I used to frequent when living in Sheff.  Let me know if you are interested as I am too far away to check regularly these days...happy to share details.

Enjoyed the first fall of chestnuts roasted on the fire yesterday. Yummy.

Lots of boletus erythropus (or neoboletus luridiformis) here...I have grown to really appreciate them as the texture is much better than ceps and they are hardly ever maggotty.  The taste isn't quite so strong as ceps but they make for up for it with texture.  The cep season is just getting started here...until this week I have only seen boletus aestivalis, but finally stumbled across my first edulis of the season a few days ago.

Parasol mushrooms have begun to fruit also, and mid-October normally gives us more than we can fit in the basket every day for a week or so.  

Apart from that, a few isolated amanita caesarea (my favourite edible fungus) and more chestnuts and walnuts than I could shake a stick at.

The parasols have started to pop up here in the last few days too. I'm also getting a lot of Kuehneromyces mutabilis too.

I'm working in Dumfries this weekend and next week so I will see what I can chase down along the coast there.

Great!  Enjoy those parasols.  I think they are one of the best grilled with a little butter, parsley and a touch of garlic.  

It was an incredible spring here for fungi but the past few months have been very dry...some heavy rain the past few days seems to have set things off again, so next week should be good.  I was in the woods today and spotted that my little patch of cantherellus amethysteus has gotten underway...always reliable from October through the late November.  I never realised until last year that there are a few different chanterelle (girolles here) species and getting an understanding of the seasons and biotopes for the different species has given me an almost year-round supply   We get cibarius from late March through to May under oak/pines.  Then ferrugineuses from June to September under beech, then amethysteus from October through to late November under chestnut and oak, and often another burst of cibarius in Jan/feb. 

Yes please. Always good to know more likely locations

I’ve got 15 jars of crab apple & chilli jelly stashed in the larder, foraged by me then lovingly crafted by Mrs Fozzy last weekend.

We’ve tried it with some homemade oak-smoked partridge breasts (shot & smoked by me) and it’s heavenly. 

Moving into October, the wild harvest starts to focus much more on meat for me. Muntjac stalking is much easier once the leaves are off & undergrowth down, pheasant, duck & partridge is plentiful and often free, and the ferrets know it’s nearly time to rattle out some fat bunnies. This weekend the chest freezer gets the annual clean in anticipation of brimming it yet again.