Black chanterelle (Craterellus cornucopioides) The Late Season (text and photo by Josef Szuecs) As I mentioned in an earlier post, mushrooms generally fruit in species dependent windows of time. The exact timing of these windows vary from year to year, affected by a number of factors. In the SF Bay area, we can start looking […]
Category Archives: flora and fauna
Ene’s Arbor Day
rows of mature olive trees at the Urban Tree Farm (photo: Ene Osteraas-Constable) I’ve asked Ene to write an occasional post for Deep Craft, and am proud to share her first story (all text and images by Ene Osteraas-Constable): I greet the deluge of the season’s first heavy rains with relief and contentment, knowing that […]
Murphy’s Law Corollary
a sea lion briefly beached itself on Doran Beach this morning as we were walking by During our morning walk along Doran Beach, Ene and I were greeted by a friendly sea lion, who watched us from the surf before proceeding to briefly beach himself within yards of us as if to say hello. We’ve […]
Sitting with Nature
With enough rainfall, Estero Americano drains to the sea, becoming seasonally tidal My favorite chair, by far, is an ocean kayak. To unwind after an intense week of new projects, I spent a quiet afternoon idly paddling down Estero Americano, my favorite local slough, now flooded to the coast. The marshy, seasonally tidal estuary is […]
The Week in Bloom
a bounty of foraged hedgehog, pig’s ear, white prince* and cauliflower mushrooms Earlier this week, my friend Josef Szuecs invited me to join him on a late season mushroom foraging expedition. Joe has been writing a seasonal Mushroom Report for DeepCraft, and is deeply steeped in mushroom culture, having collected, cooked and eaten wild mushrooms […]
Hoshigaki
nearly ripe Hachiya Persimmon, ready to be peeled and hung to dry Looking up at the persimmon tree’s wild constellation of fruit still languidly dangling, you’d hardly know we already picked over two bushels for drying. Ene recently discovered the Japanese art of Hoshigaki, a technique of drying fruit by a combination of open-air hanging […]
Joe’s midseason Mushroom Report
This week my friend Josej Szuecs has graciously penned the second installment of his Mushroom Report: Midseason Mushrooms (text and photo by Josef Szeucs) The question is often posed to me: “When do the mushrooms start coming up?” In the western US, I start foraging two or three weeks after the first significant rainfall. This […]