Bryoandersonia illecebra, Millipede hiding out among the Stereum complicatum or common named crowded parchment.
Today we startled a rabbit as we walked through the woods in the misty rain. Somehow we caught him by surprise, crunching up the hillside behind the shed. He startled and panicked, ran 50 feet away, then stopped, stretched his legs and shook it off.
There were a few puddles of water collecting in depressions up top in the clearing.
I just heard on NPR that as of today, there’s no county in Virginia in a drought. This is as a result of the wet month we’ve had. Auricularia auricula-judae (Bull.) Wettst. – Jelly Ear Fungus.
Mainly seen in winter and spring. It grows on dead elder trees and on fallen branches, but occasionally you may also find it growing on other kinds of hardwood. Jelly Ear is sometimes used in cookery, where it provides an interesting texture but is nothing special in terms of flavour. Young fresh fruitbodies (above) are generally considered the best. We have not tried it although we hear it’s good in soups and adds nutrients.
We’re excited to report we’ve almost finished insulating the shed. We cut down a few more black knot infected black cherry trees and some other standing dead trees. We have so much work to do in the forest. The ground was wet and squishy in areas especially down at the bottom of the slope and around the waterway. We found a few more downy rattlesnake orchids. The leaves on the beech trees are showing buds. We went across to look at the waterfalls in the wet weather.
We pulled out vines, found mosses, worts and lichen in abundance. Even in the wintry weather, we found the jelly wood ear and crowded parchment fruiting bodies.
Waterway at bottom of slope where we saw tiny minnows swimming today. Eyelash lichen with hairs growing from it down by the waterway. Oyster mushrooms sporing on a tulip poplar stump. Running cedar in the paw paw grove. Another downy rattlesnake orchid spotted right off of the main clearing up top.
We went over today and we are almost finished insulating the shed. We also chopped up several trees we had felled a few weeks ago and brought them home to burn. One was a black cherry with black knot fungus and the other was a standing dead tree. We walked down North Trail and around the bottom. We crossed over the waterway to explore some in the paw paw grove and up the Ridge Trail. It was a gorgeous day. We were very pleased to find the tiny minnows in the waterway.
Stereum ostrea, false turkey tail, at the top of North Trail.
It was drizzling rain and the high temperature was in the 50s. We saw many plants on the forest floor greening up. As we walked through the woods, we pulled out vines or cut them to kill them and stop them from strangling the trees. We took down some standing dead trees as well. We walked down from the top by the driveway and wound around the southern wet weather gully to the waterway at the bottom of the slope. We followed the waterway around to the wet weather gullies on the north central slope. It was lovely out. We also found a cluster of oyster mushrooms.
Pleurotus ostreatus, oyster mushrooms growing from a buried stump.
We were able to get most of the insulation in the shed completed.
A fern mossDeer lichen in the sunshine and New York scalewort on the log in the shadow. A small fern found along the north side of Saint Andrew’s Forest Farm. They were abundant throughout the forest and along the wet weather gullies.
We took a quick trip over and found more mosses, lichen and worts. No mushrooms today. It’s just too cold. We trailbrazed some through the dense trees. We cut back vines. We repositioned the trail cam to catch images of the red fox family. We also dreamed about building log cabins, more trails and meditation spots in the forest. We stayed in the north central area and passed by the culvert with the shoe lasts.
We strengthened the internal structure of the shed some more by adding hurricane clips and other strong ties. Next time, we will insulate and put up interior walls.
The tiny black cup fungi, Urnula craterium, hiding among the pine needles and lichen caught our eye when we looked twice!
Cup lichenGreater whipwort, Bazzania trilobata Cladonia peziziformis, turban cup lichenSnakewort, Conocephalum salebrosumBrachythecium rivulare or Waterside feather moss Dicranum scoparium, Broom forkmoss Leucobryum glaucum, pincushion moss
We were delighted to find all of these mosses, lichens and liverworts. They are so alive and colorful in the forest while everything else has gone drab for winter. We are going to walk around the north side of the farm and look for more types as soon as we get back out there.
We moved our big table and two benches as well as firebox grate to the farm and will be happy for this if we ever sit down to relax. lol.
When we camp, we can use this for fire until we dig our fire pit.
We thought we’d found a new type of moss but it is also a Haircap moss. Lichen and moss are the stars of the show in the forest right now.These turban cup lichen are so fun. How have we never noticed them before?Ok, last one for today. Top of the cap of Laccaria. Beautiful reddish brown and emerging in a warm snap during a particularly cold winter near pines and poplars. A spring that is active after rains. We noticed a bit of a larger hole inside of this. Water pooling just above the wet weather spring with the small hole. The larger spring that has trickled throughout the driest weather conditions. The inside of the shed. Finally ready for insulating.
So far we have seen a large deer missing half his antlers walking by the waterway at night and a black dog with a white face strolling through at night as well since we moved the trail cam to the waterway. We saw the black dog and hoped we caught a glimpse of the bear. Not yet! We moved the trail cam to try to catch some images of the red fox family.
We continue to cut down and clear out black cherry trees and tulip poplars that are diseased and dying. Since it’s been cold this winter, we are burning them in our fireplace. It’s been nice.
Later this week, we plan to take a table and a couple of benches out to the farm to have a place to sit other than the truck. 😀
We are also looking to begin to put together a fire pit in the middle of our main clearing. A big tree stump sits there and we will dig in and put rocks inside. It will be nice to stay warm when we camp.
Found along the southern wet weather gully on Fern Trail. Common Haircap Moss. We saw these all along the trail. Turban cup lichen also growing along Fern Trail near the southern wet weather gully.
We went out today and found these interesting moss and lichen. We also found mushrooms and walked along the bottom flood plain. The water had washed away the leaves and we could see the rich soil. It was warm in the mid seventies and smelled like spring.
We cut down several diseased black cherry trees and loaded it all into the truck and brought it home to burn.
Found next to driveway up top growing from under a stump. Hypholoma lateritium, brick cap.
We drove over to Buckingham County yesterday afternoon after spending our first full week away because the weather was very very cold. A few of those days did not reach much above freezing. We didn’t expect to find mushrooms because of the low temperatures but we were pleasantly surprised.
Hygroscopic earthstar, Astraeus hygrometricus, found in clearing up top very near the North Trail head.
We also found a number of puff ball mushrooms down at the bottom of the slope in the floodplain. They were everywhere. We also found Calostoma lutescens up top. The ground was moist everywhere. The waterway was trickling along, though the levels were down from last week.
The shed was dry and is still waiting for us to complete our indoor projects. We are waiting on a new tool that is overdue.
We cut down a dead tulip poplar and collected every piece of black cherry with black knot fungus we saw and loaded this into the truck to take home to burn.
We got a new trail cam in December which we placed about 5 feet off North Trail just 10 feet away from the clearing. We kept it there for a few weeks. We had trouble viewing the videos collected and were relieved to see it does work. These three were recorded in late December and early January. Today we moved the trail cam down by the waterway at the bottom of the slope. We will check it next week.
Cat hunting around the stumpery. You can hear something walking around. We have a still shot of glowing eyes behind the tree to the right. Could be a possum. A squirrel hopping around the stumpery. It’s a winter wonderland at SAFF. We were excited to come out and look for animal footprints. We saw deer, squirrel, rabbit, cat and dog prints in the snow throughout the farm but most notably up top. A few deer prints deep into the woods. This is just about the view of where we placed the new trail cam today. We hope to see animals. We saw deer prints down here today in the snow. The view where the new trail cam had been for the past few weeks. Today it is covered in snow and we didn’t find any tracks.
The shed stayed dry and we continued fire blocking today.
Genus Goodyera, downy rattlesnake plaintain orchid. The most common native orchid in North America. It was once used historically as a medicinal plant by Native Americans for curing numerous ailments. The roots were made into a tea for treating lung inflammation/breathing pain and for snakebites: none of this is currently recommended. Although the plant does have beautiful blooms.
It was a blustery and sunny 42 degrees Fahrenheit day in Buckingham County for our walk around the farm. We came over to measure and mark some boards for cutting back at home with the table saw. We are still working on fire blocking the shed and we checked the new trail cam. We finally got some images and video. We are very pleased. So far, a large gray tabby cat, a squirrel and what could be a possum have been captured by the new trail camera. We will download this later tonight and add footage to a post.
A brief video of a small waterfall. Just 15 seconds.
We began our walk up top by the driveway where we saw mushrooms. A few Russula and Laccaria. They were old and had frozen and thawed several times at least. Nevertheless, we stared at them and wanted to know more. We also found some as yet unidentified little brown mushrooms by the large loblollies in the clearing up top. There were hundreds of them. They ranged from quarter size to silver dollar size and were gilled, brown spored and slimy on the cap. The sliminess may be from the freezing weather overnight. They smelled faintly of mushroom and had no taste with a spit test.
Unknown little brown mushrooms (LBMs). These are notoriously hard to identify. At some point, we may resort to microscopy to determine their specific Genus. They are growing around several loblolly pines directly from the forest floor under the pine needle litter and leaves.
As we walked through the forest, we were searching for more invasive paulownia trees to mark and eventually clear them from the forest with their aggressive growth and reseeding. We have 2 large paulownia in the big clearing and 4 medium sized paulownia in the small clearing up top that we call the amphitheater. So far, this is what we’ve found. In spring, they will be even easier to spot. We will remove these as soon as possible and continue to keep a lookout for more.
On a positive note, we did find the downy rattlesnake plaintain orchid pictured above. We found this along our Fern Trail and saw it in multiple spots around the farm. It was noticeably fuzzy and striking with its leaf pattern. The vibrant leaves are enjoying the cold, wet weather we’ve had. We can’t wait to see them bloom in July and August. We will be on the lookout for white inflorescence densely packed along the top portion of the bloom spike (terminal raceme).
Another video with a clearer view of the small waterfall . About 31 seconds Another even smaller waterfall with a small cave to the right side.The cave was filled with water. We will try to get better pictures. 46 seconds We found a culvert which appears to run under an old road in our northeast central area of the farm. This culvert has several dozen of what appears to be a hinged shoe lasts with a hole on top that a pole could go through. Made out of plastic. We can’t figure out why they are there. The culvert with these plastic shoe lasts described above. We hope to figure this out.
We walked all the way around the farm and were happy to come across the culvert and hinged shoe lasts again as we’d looked for it for months. This time we were able to determine where the culvert ended as well as find a dozen more hinged shoe lasts. We are very curious about this mystery.
The days are getting longer. It was still light as we drove home. We feel grateful to have the forest and have enjoyed every season so far.
Saint Andrew’s Forest Farm 