#foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism

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#mushrooms #foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism

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idk how i feel about this fashion youtuber yet but there’s an “ideal foraging outfit” in one of the first vids i saw and i politely asked in people actually forage in skirts in the comments and apparently she actually does. which is like, cool that she actually forages. i guess maybe it depends on the woods and what you’re foraging how practical or impractical it would be to wear a skirt, but like... ticks? mosquitoes? mud? branches? even if you’re not dealing with brambles.

i guess i generally find long flowy skirts to be impractical anyway so i am biased in this respect. i should learn how to make skirts practical i guess

(I really want my ultimate foraging outfit to be super cute, and I do have a vision that involves being able to pull off cargoes and wearing my toolbelt with a trowel and scissors and plastic bags, while I don’t have as much a specific shirt in mind. But it does seem more likely that I’ll continue foraging with a bag rather than a toolbelt and not look cool because I don’t actually need a bagless option and subtlety is more valuable than looking cool.)

#salinda nichols #foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism

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I know oysters are common, a seasoned forager isn't gonna get excited about them, but a beautiful intact flush...

(I'm glad I can get excited about common things, cause then I get excited more often. And they taste better than lots of rarer mushrooms imo)

#mushrooms #foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism

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One downside of foraging is kinda unlimited fomo

#foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism #idk how i decide what goes here v eatfreeordie #if it's not directly about food specifics it's a tossup idk

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I follow this woman for thrifting content but she sometimes forages in her vlogs and it's always exciting bonus foraging content to me. (Also shows how much she delays because it never matches the season)

#foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism #vintage bombshell #they got some nice chicken of the woods in this one

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while i obviously agree with the concepts of sustainable foraging, i can't really personally get behind the idea that if there's poison ivy around, something(?) is telling you not to harvest, and like totally go by that if that's your spirituality belief but i don't really think that's an ethical issue. and then i also take issue with saying if there's just one mushroom it's already sad, don't kill it, cause... i think we all know at this point that picking the fruiting body doesn't kill the mushroom. to me that seems like perpetuating misinformation?

i think there are good reasons not to take all of things. i also think it's hard if not impossible to make solid blanket rules like that because... we're only there when we're there, seeing what we see. if i see one hedgehog mushroom in an area where it grows all the time, it could be the only one, but it also could not? and like 90% of the time you need to pick a mushroom just to ID it and I don't think there's anything wrong with that as long as you're not hurting the mycelium.

i think it's important not to be greedy about foraging but also to be conscious of where you are, whether it's frequently foraged, and what you're picking and whether other creatures rely fully on it. it's easy to fall into a false narrative of scarcity foraging too. and I think if you've never found a beefsteak polypore and you find a little one in a low-traffic forest with a wide variety of food for mushroom-eaters... it's ok to cook and enjoy it.

#food cw #in my unpopular opinion #i'm an alexisnikole fan blog now #foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism

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is this my spotify wrapped?

#seek app fandom #foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism #mushrooms #seek year in review

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I was just thinking about how I once found oysters all along this log but never since, and then I glimpsed these beauties further up

#mushrooms #foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism

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Not to scare yall off foraging, but, the kind of little worm guy I sometimes find in mushrooms was just crawling on my keyboard? Like, how the fuck did it get here?? From the kitchen? I guess i was chopping mushrooms in the living room earlier and maybe my laptop desk was nearby and it hitched a ride?

#tw bugs #foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism

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The thing about chickweed is it's... fine. It's exciting in the spring because it's one of the first things to come up, it's fresh and green, and the texture is less divisive than deadnettle.

But when it comes back in the fall and it feels like an old friend... it's underwhelming. We're still living in a world of abundance, and we might still be able to get purslane, or if not it's a very recent memory. Chickweed just doesn't taste as good when it's not in contrast to winter.

(It is frequent described as mild, which is often foragers' way of saying it tastes like nothing but its closest competitors that taste like something are worse.)

#food cw #foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism

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Third time finding 'em young enough to eat at least edges... but this time I'm gonna eat some resinous polypore!

#mushrooms #foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism

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luckily paper is very versatile but it’s interesting to me how foraging journals seem to generally be set up in ways that aren’t intuitive to me and don’t seem as useful? idk if my intuitions and goals are different from other foragers, or if i just don’t get it and it would be useful to me too.

but like, if it’s organized by species and you can’t change the order, how are you going to find one you’re looking for? and would you just add lots of dates/locations in those fields, or are they thinking you’d have a full entry every time you find the same thing?

idk to me, organizing by month and just listing what i found in a particular area on a particular day makes the most sense to me, and i think there’s less need for an individual to record details about a species (in a world where the internet and field guides exist) and the most essential things to track are where and when you found the thing (and any tips you figured out about processing, cooking, etc.) because you can’t google that. but i’m sure lots of people enjoy drawing the species, that’s just not my skillset or vibe

#foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism #foraging journals

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I get why most if not all organized foraging walks are targeted to beginners but I do feel like I'm at a point where I have a ton to learn but it's a little harder to figure out how to keep steadily learning

#foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism

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Chicken of the woods is so autumnal

#food cw #mushrooms #foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism #yeah I know it also fruits in spring and summer #the colors though

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It's kinda funny to me that there's a Maryland mushroom sharing fb group because I guess it's a common enough thing for people to forage more than they can keep up with, but particularly re: mushrooms? I guess maybe it's easier to underestimate how much mushroom you're harvesting than berries or greens or something

(I might be a little more nervous about sharing mushrooms though because you lose some ID characteristics once it's harvested and you gotta be sure of what you got.)

#food cw #foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism

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Secret root cave of hens

#mushrooms #foraging is my quarantine coping mechanism #hen of the woods