Saturday was another low key day at THF.  My favorite kind of day.  All we planned to get done was tilling the compost in and then using the edging attachment to finalize the three beds for our garlic.  Is it just me, or does this look like a great set up for Halloween?
It was apparent right away that we needed some more practice with the edging. Lucky for us, Ron is on a 10 year plan.  But we got the beds laid out and all was ready for planting on Monday.  All three of us have that day off, so the work should go faster.  Besides, we have experience in garlic planting.
Ron and I headed out to check on the mushrooms. Me, I was hoping that we wouldn’t find many. It is getting closer to the holidays and I have a long list of things to get done. Finding takers for our mushrooms has no place on that list. Shiitakes; we picked eight of them. Easily handled. Bagged them up and set them aside to pick up on our way back through. Then we headed to check on the wine caps. There we found an explosion of growth.  Do you see the one coming out from under the bed rail?

We had forgotten to bring paper bags with us. I had left one in the Transit but we already used that for the Shiitakes. Now we had to come with another plan. Ron had a couple of plastic crates out there and a couple of empty garbage bags. Bag stuffed inside the crate did the trick and we headed back to the Transit. We had to hook the trailer back up as Ron would need that for the straw bales he had to buy. That will go over the garlic to protect it from frost heave. As we were already out, I suggested we get them before we went home. We headed back toward Rome and stopped at local farm to buy 6 bales. The whole time we were trying to think of someone, anyone we could get in touch with that would like to some red wine cap mushrooms. Tried calling a few friends, but nobody was home.
Back at the house, we started unloading while still trying to come up with a plan. We were so desperate to reduce the pile we had that we snagged a neighbor walking her dog and got her to take a bag. Our next door neighbor came out at the right time and he got some too. Not a big dent, but it helped. Ron sat on front porch cleaning mushrooms while I made another call. And success. Jan said she would by later and get some from us. Ron finished up and decided that he would try grilling some wine caps. His previous attempt had been; well, lackluster is a good word.  We had done some research and found mention of grilling. They don’t recommend sautéing but say they can be used as any other mushroom. They are less meaty and slightly sweet. Ron chose smaller ones and cut them in half. I got him some wooden skewers while he started up the grill. Olive oil, salt and fresh cracked pepper and he was ready to go. Having never done this before, he started with indirect heat for the first minutes, then dropped them onto the grill in order to get those nice grill marks. While he was doing all this, I was busy slicing the rest of the mushrooms in order to dehydrate them. Plans are to try adding them to a barley soup.
Ron pulled the wine caps off the grill and tried a bite. A few minutes thought and he was pleased. But he decided that a dollop of my freshly made hummus (with our own organically grown garlic, of course) would send it over the top. That was good, but he wanted to try adding some heat to it. A good sized splash of his favorite habanero pepper sauce and Ron was a happy man.  He will have to plan better next time. We either have to buy some metal skewers or he has to start the process sooner and get the wooden ones soaked.  They do tend to burst into flames when used dry.