October 29, 2023 Connecting Chanterelle Trail and a Fox Den

We planted our first cover crop last week of crimson clover and winter rye on almost an acre and then topped it with straw bales to hold moisture. When we arrived today, we mowed and picked up trash along the road.

The fall foliage really peaked in Staunton this weekend but over the mountains at Saint Andrew’s Forest Farm, the colors were a little more muted with lots of green. Walking through the forest was noisy with the leaves crunching underfoot.

We decided to work on connecting Chanterelle Trail from the North Trail towards the South Trail. We had to cut back through hundreds of small, diseased and dying trees. Many tulip poplar, maples, dogwoods and some pine. We worked our way up and then tied my orange shirt to a tree limb and walked back around from the South Trail to Chanterelle Trail. We were only 15 or 20 yards away! It was here we found a fox den with tracks all around it.

The old end of Chanterelle Trail where we connected it yesterday. My orange shirt is tied to a limb to the left of center.

From trail, this is what we saw. When we got in closer, we saw a tunnel.

We think it’s a fox den and we’ve seen a red fox a few times in the area

Fall SAFF 2023

Bonus maple 🍁 from our front yard in Staunton

Late September through October 10, 2023 Fall has arrived

And so has our shed! We will create a compost toilet and shower to make camping feel like glamping inside of this shed. We’ve been busy clearing the site and pouring concrete footers. Don delivered it yesterday from Richmond.

It’s gotten much cooler, even into the mid 30’s at night in Staunton. High 30’s in Buckingham. Brisk! So we’ve had potted up tropical plants to move indoors and onto the front porch in which to enclose them. We’ve frozen plenty of our cherry tomatoes this year and a good bit of our peppers. The garden was very productive as we’d added extra compost before we planted. We also had some rain early on and that helped get us through. At Saint Andrew’s Forest Farm, we are planning what we’ll plant and where. We are observing the wetter areas and watching. Finding sustainable solutions to grow more food and nurture the forest and its inhabitants. We haven’t seen our young bear for weeks, but thought we smelled him by the waterway at the bottom of the slope. We have heard the woodpecker calling and laughing as we get our tasks done.

Hops!

The last few days of September were spent scouting out our boundaries, meeting our neighbors, hanging ‘no hunting’ signs and continuing to blaze trails, clear out dead, dying and undeveloped trees and branches and digging our footers for the compost toilet. It rained a lot so we had many mushrooms to admire and identify.

We were excited to explore and make trails along our north boundary and we found a spot with tree of Heaven, ailanthus, which we were able to pull out with the roots since the ground was wet. It was such a relief for us to see how easily they came out. 🎊🎉

We will need to watch this spot for regrowth as tree of Heaven roots are similar to bamboo. It’s the most invasive, destructive tree we’ve encountered. It had not gotten more than a toe- hold in this section with 2 medium-sized trees in the understory of larger pines and oaks and about 30 smaller ones sprouting out in circles from the others before we pulled what we could see out. Happily, we also found oyster mushrooms growing in that same area. A dead tree had oysters throughout, top to bottom. We could see the white network of mycelium. They are decomposers and eat dead hardwood. We were happy to use this wood to inoculate other dead trees.

Gills of the oyster mushrooms

Tops of the oysters. We came back with a chainsaw and cut the log into pieces and put these smaller logs in our stumperies where they will seed and spore for us in the dead wood that feeds them. We hope to have plenty more oysters in the years to come.

Along the south end, by St Andrew’s Road, we cut in alongside of the power lines and then dropped in to follow the waterway heading down to the creek. We found large fairy rings and clusters of white mushrooms called Entoloma sinuatum.

Appearing in late summer and autumn, fruit bodies are found in deciduous woodlands on clay or chalky soils, or nearby parklands, sometimes in the form of fairy rings. E. sinuatum causes primarily gastrointestinal problemsthat, though not generally life-threatening, have been described as highly unpleasant. Delirium and depression are uncommon sequelae.

Entoloma abortivum, shrimp of the woods found everywhere down by the creek bed at bottom south end in early October after heavy rains.

As we went further down along the main creek bed at bottom, we found a bunch of clusters of shrimp of the woods. We were excited to find this delicious treat.

These mushrooms are formed where the honey mushroom fungus, Armillaria, meets the Entoloma. It was believed that the honey mushroom, Armillaria mellea, was parasitizing the entoloma. But research^[6]has indicated that the inverse may be true—the entoloma may be parasitizing the honey mushroom. In that case, they are misnamed. We’ve seen both types of fungus in the area.

We have found many Amanita species. We identified the American Fly Agaric and also found Amanita crenulata and Amanita polypyramus just yesterday. They were beautiful. A. polypyramus was the largest mushroom we’ve found. Striking. They are mycorrhizal with pines helping the trees to get more nutrients in a symbiotic relationship.

A. crenulata a small one

A. polypyramus the largest we’ve seen

Leaves are falling all over the forest floor. Sometimes hiding mushrooms. The colors of the leaves are now shifting from green and yellow to yellow, orange and red.

Chris wearing orange now in hunting season is painting our boundary pipe with white spray paint. We followed the boundaries in 3 corners now and reapplied white paint to borders. We will explore the last area soon. It’s getting easier to move through the woods as the leaves are dropping.

We found this shy ratsnake who did not want to be photographed. He went and hid behind this tree. Nearly 6 feet long. They are beneficial and pose no risk to humans. They eat mice and rats. Adept climbers. They are constrictors.