We couldn’t think of a better way to spend a day off then walking through the woods looking for mushrooms. I took a lot of photos, so bare with me for those who are not interested in mushrooms. But I hope at the very least you see the beauty of these fungi.

I thought I would begin with one of my favorite photos. I just love these three Amanita.

I love the pure whiteness of this variety. But there are others I love as well.

Here is another with color rather than pure white. If I were to guess, it would be the Amanita excelsa.

Here is a fabulous one.

Here is the Coral Mushroom (Lentaria byssiseda).

I love how it looks like underwater coral.

A fun find was the Jack-O’Lantern mushroom (Omphalotus illundens). If you view it in the dark, it glows. As pretty as it is, poisonous.

They look a little like Yellow Chanterelles.

This group is quite large and a fun find.

This is the underside of a Yellow Chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius). It is edible, but the ones we found were too old.

Here is a really, really large shelf mushroom (Ganoderma applanatum), otherwise known as the Artist’s Conk. Artist use the underside as a canvas to draw on.

We usually find a lot of shelf mushrooms in the woods.

Peeking out from behind these leaves is a Lobster mushroom (Hypomyces lactifuorum). This is supposed to be a rare mushroom, but a highly prized edible one. What a find! In fact, we found several.

Some of our find was a little too old, but several of the mushrooms went from forest to frying pan.

We found a lot of Boletes and we were really excited about it. These were really large and looked like they would be great fun to eat. But once we got home, Chuck bit into a few and spit them out. So much for an edible find.

This is a polypore mushroom, hence a porous underside.

One of the identifying factors is the color the Bolete bruises.

This plant just makes a really cool photo in both green and when it is ripe.

Here is a more ripened flower. I’m not sure what it is.

This Orange-peel mushroom looks like a rose to me.

There are many mushrooms we can’t identify, but they are worth a photograph.

This is Trametes vericolor. It looks like the lace of a wedding dress going down the tree.

I love the colors of many of these mushrooms. We believe this is the Purple-gilled Laccaria. It is edible, but there are gills, so we’re not so sure we’ll be eating it.

Here is the toothed bottom of a Hedgehog mushroom (Hydnum repandum). These two found their way to the top of our pizza that we had for dinner tonight. (photos to follow).

There are many others, but dang, I’m getting tired of posting. We are going hunting again tomorrow. We’ve had a day of rain and a few night-time storms, so the hunting should be good. You will all find out soon.

Aaron, our grandson, came to visit the farm. Here he is with his mom Ashley.

Duke thought he smelled pretty good.

Here’ he’s meeting all of the chickens. There were a few that thought his toes looked like good things to eat. Aaron wasn’t so sure about the chickens. We went to visit the horses, but I didn’t get any good pictures, but Ashley did.

Here Aaron is hanging with grandpa. He thinks this is okay.

Especially when they play the jumping game.

He also loved swinging on the swing. I can’t wait until he can come visit us again.

I love pickled foods. I’ve always been a big fan of herring, pickles, saurkraut, jalepenos, etc… I really love pickled peppers. And not just because I’m really good at tongue twisters. I decided that the words should be: peter piper picked a peck of pickling peppers rather than pickled peppers.

I would like to have a peck of pickling peppers. According to WikiAnswers - A peck is a measure of volume associated with dry goods. It is rarely, if ever, used to measure liquids.  It is equal to 16 dry pints, which is about 0.311 cubic foot.  Note the word dry.  A dry pint is not the same as a liquid pint.  Four pecks equal a bushel.

I only pickled one pint of peppers.

But I moved on. We have had many, many pecks of beans. In fact, we have had bushels of beans. Where’s the tongue twister in that  — Benny bought beautiful bushes of beans? Or is that Brody? Regardless, we have blanched many bushels of beans, enough to get us through the winter. So I decided to pickle the beans.

The beginning is similar to blanching, but then I put the beans in jars, add garlic, dill and in some cayenne pepper.

Now isn’t that a beautiful pint of pickled beans.

The end result — 11 pints of beans ready to eat in a couple of months. I will let you know…

After dropping Maddy off at college, Chuck and I drove up to see his parents in Brainerd. They are an hour north of St. Cloud in a tourist town made famous by the movie Fargo.  I was really excited to see the giant Paul Bunyan statue, but they moved him to a new location. He’s still in Brainerd, but not part of our travels.

Chuck’s dad built this house and right next door lives his Aunt and Uncle.

This home is actually a boxcar converted into a house. It is really quite unique. I’m sorry I didn’t have my camera when touring the house and the lake. We went on a wonderful pontoon ride around the lake with Chuck’s parents and Aunt and Uncle.

The water is quite clear and it is fun to watch the fish swim around.

We went on a hike and found a couple of treasures. The surprising one is the fresh asparagus in late August. What a treat. And here is an oyster mushroom. We didn’t eat the mushroom because Chuck didn’t bring his identifying books and he didn’t want to be known as the guy who killed his family by poisoning them with a deadly mushroom.

As you can see, it has gills and you need to be extra careful about eating a mushroom with gills. They are the only mushrooms that can kill you. Others may make you sick, but the wrong gilled mushroom may put you underground.

This is the view from the screened in porch. I call this Mother Martin’s favorite view. She enjoys a couple of hours in this room working on various projects and enjoying the view.

It is quite peaceful.

It was fun spending time with them in this special room.

Father and son fixing the world’s problems.

Thank you for the hospitality. We had a really nice time. It was a great way to complete the college drop off.

What? I didn’t take pictures of the overpacked car? Somehow we all fit in and made it to Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. I must say the move-in was very amazing. We got to the dorm and three guys were waiting to unload our car. In a matter of minutes, our over-stuffed car was empty and Maddy was unpacking.

The unpacking begins.

Maddy’s dorm room is actually a decent size.

Lots of closet and shelf space. This is much nicer than the dorm room I remember as an undergrad. After some unpacking, we went to a large cookout for families and walked around campus.

Her dorm is right on the Mississipi, so we took a bit of the river walk through campus.

This is the first time we’ve been to St. Cloud and it hasn’t been raining. It is a really pretty campus.

Even her dorm room has a nice view. Behind all of those trees is the river. We left Maddy to her room and her new roommate. They seem to get along great. Chuck and I headed north to visit his parents for a night in Brainerd.

It has been awhile since I’ve been here. In addition to being sick myself, Maddy had her adenoids out last friday. So we’ve been busy. In addition, we packed Maddy up and sent her to college. The morning we were leaving we had to clean up the garden.

Onions are briaded.

Beans needing blanching and freezing.

Tomatoes that need to be frozen.

I work from home. Today is a beautiful day. The windows are open and the ducks are driving me crazy with their non-stop skwacking. There are workers here, putting up fences and the ducks are just not happy about them.

I turns out that geese were used by the Romans and now are being used by the US military for guard duty.

If that is not amazing enough, Duke uses the ducks to enhance his ability to guard and protect. Duke has learned that when the ducks do that warning-squawking, he needs to run over to them and add some muscle and sharp teeth to the defenses.

I think Lori mentioned this before, but one Saturday morning the ducks went insane. So I went outside to see what all the commotion was about. Sure enough there was a raccoon threatening the chickens. Duke loves to “get” raccoons so off he went. The duck early warning system saved the chickens.

I bet ducks or geese would be great at protecting from snakes too. For those people who are concerned about snakes…

These animals are truly amazing. I feel so safe.

Maddy’s hot-headed, fast moving Arab is going western. Not only is she in a western saddle, she’s riding Monty bitless. Go Maddy!

Need I say more? This is tonight’s dinner. Bing cherries, chicken and other goodies. If you want more information, drop us a line.

Okay, well, it wasn’t that big, but big enough to be remembered. I think we will always remember being without electricty for almost 24 hours and cooking meals on the grill. But as for damage, we didn’t have much by our house.

We had a tree branch fall.

Not that big of a deal. So we took a trip up to see the Tisch’s where we heard they had a little different story.

And it started with Chicken Little saying…

“the sky is falling, the sky is falling.” And perhaps from their perspective, it was.

Okay, I love this picture.

And the henhouse wasn’t the only thing that did some flipping.

Down in the pasture you see a stock trailer. Nothing looks too abnormal, unless you realize that before the storm, that trailer was standing where I am now. If you look closely you will see some broken fences it took down along the way.

Here is one of many imprints it made in the lawn as it rolled its way down. Good thing everything was blowing away from the house and not towards it.

Here the trailer ends. It doesn’t look too bad considering, but if you take a closer look you’ll see some damage.

There are a few holes in the roof and who knows what else.

The other damage is in fencing. In the world of livestock farming, nothing is more important than fencing. It is the first thing that needs tending or rather mending.

Chuck went out to help with this BIG tree that took down another section of fence. That thing must have lived for 100 years before the big storm of August 9.

The kids kind of lost out too.

You could say it is a little squashed.

If you look closely in this picture, you will see a trampoline. Previously this tree blocked the road, but crews came out right away and cleared about five trees from the road.

I’m not quite sure how the trampoline will get out of the trees. Perhaps it will take the next big storm.