This blog is titled Rural Rhythm Revival because it is meant to celebrate and give voice to our timely activities throughout the seasons in our rural community.  With this in mind, I would like to mention that October not only is the time to plant our garlic and shallots, but it is also time to plant the seeds of our informal rural food network in the Samish Watershed. The Bow Little Harvest Market on October 20 was a day of community connections made with hundreds of neighbors gathered around Food Security, community and celebration. 

The market is a place to meander and pause amongst neighbors and functions as a temporary village commons, which is largely missing from our rural area.  As folks listen to Simme of Poor Man’s Jug Band sing old folk and gospel tunes, eat Carolyn’s delicious gluten-free goodies, shop for local food and wares, or wait for Tom Schoonover of Schoonover Farm to press their cider, there is a space made for informal connections between people.  These passing conversations and chance encounters are the seeds of a growing sense of community.  Cultivated on the fertile ground of these seemingly superficial, chance encounters, deeper connections between neighbors eventually fruit into greater community resilience.  Informal networks flourish while chatting with neighbors.  Talking to a man who is passionate about winter gardening, we learn he would be willing to co-teach a class and share which winter greens can be eaten in January without hoop houses or cold frames.   Meeting another man who just moved into the area, we learn he has just bought a commercial pasta maker and was thrilled to see that Fairhaven Flour Mill sells bulk Durham wheat.  Another woman, who just moved into ‘downtown’ Alger donated her large unused front yard signage to help promote the activities of the Alger Improvement Club, Chuckanut Transition, and the Bow Little Market.  Yet another woman shared her dream of getting people together for cooperative food preservation efforts at her house.  And many, many more people were excited to learn about the Food Swap and are on board for next year.

Besides creating a temporary village commons for these informal connections, the Market Ladies also create the space for neighbors to gather and wheel-deal their surplus preserves, fresh food and seed.   At this year’s 2nd annual Bow Little Market Food and Seed Swap, three varieties of potatoes, sweet meat squash, liberty apples, walnuts, peach pie filling, fresh cider, pickled green beans, sun dried tomatoes, cayenne peppers, stewed plums, peach salsa, cherries, quince, applesauce, blackberry, strawberry, blueberry-lavender, aronia, and hardy kiwi jam, chocolate truffles, boysenberry vinegar, kale seed, oat seed, perennial multiplier onion bulbs, seed shallots and IOU’s for lard and currant bushes passed back and forth across the table.

There were also formal networks made from the Market Ladies intentions to foster buying groups and food shares. Community members organized a sign-up for bulk flour and grains from Fairhaven Mill and Bluebird Grain Farms, organically, locally grown meat birds, beef and pork, Patterned Ground CSA biodynamic produce, hard apple cider, bulk non-GMO seed, as well as goat milk and cheese shares.  These buying groups and food shares will be listed on our Bow Little Market website.  Soon, you can go to our website to sign up for groups already in existence or suggest a buying group of your own.  Just like a tree planted in autumn, throughout fall and winter the roots of these groups will grow and spread, so in the springtime they will be ready to take off and flourish.

The beautiful part of it all is that this is a purely volunteer effort, with community members pitching in to create this handmade market, which exists out of the sheer determination of its volunteers, the commitment of its customers and the commonly held belief that we need to recreate our lost rural village network.  Cindy, Cathy and Earl Curry, the owners of the Belfast Feed Store, worked for hours getting the donated barn area cleaned out for the market.  The Market Ladies and Men were there at dawn directing vendors, putting up tents and signage, brewing coffee, and setting the table for it all to happen.  Rita Ordonez of Community Action food and access programs gave up her Saturday to bring information on food security issues like the Ending Childhood Hunger 1095 Skagit Campaign, Non-GMO Project, and the LaConner Farm to School project that is getting local food into their cafeteria.  (For more information you can also read a recent Skagit Valley Herald article on LaConner’s local food to cafeteria effort or go to WSFFN Fresh Food in Schools Project to learn more about other similar projects in Washington State.) The pumpkin pitch team also generously donated their trebuchet skills this year and launched those bright orange orbs to the delight of children and adults both.  Finally, to tie together this celebration of children, neighbors, and autumn’s bounty, the musicians generously shared their sound. Chuck Nafziger started us out on flute and Brit Keeton ended our day with her fiddling.  The Poor Man’s Jug Band, playing from 12-2, kept an upbeat tempo and led this harvest season’s Rural Rhythm Revival.  Thanks to all who participated.  The Harvest Market was just more proof that The Bow Little Market isn’t a building or a board of directors; it is the people who commit to gathering at a set location and time on a country road miles away from the city.

I am coming down from the excitement that goes with helping with last Sunday's mushroom show in Bellingham.  In spite of the very dry weather that proceeded it, club members found an impressive number of species and the show was as wonderful as ever.  But now the rains are here and we can expect the fall mushrooms to appear in profusion. 

Oyster mushroom (Pleurotiu pulminarius) have been appearing for the last month around my place despite the dry weather.  In dry weather, you have a little time from when they fruit until harvesting, but in wet, you need to get them quickly or they go soggy and rot.  Check your alder snags and downed alders often.

Deer Mushrooms (Pluteus cervinus) have also pushed through the dry, but their numbers should increase greatly with the rain.  They always grow on rotten downed wood (that is one identifying criteria).  They are not meaty, and they have a touch of bitterness, but it makes my day when I find them out back before breakfast and I saute them with onions to go with my eggs.

Shaggy Parasols (Chlorophyllum oliveria, C. brunneum, or C. rhachodes) were found for the show in small numbers.  If we are lucky, they will be in our woods in large numbers soon.  There were some smaller Lepiotas at the show that I hear can be mistaken for them, but I personally cannot see a similarity.  Just to be sure, pick only big shaggy parasols off the ground under trees.  If they are young, the ball on the stem should be 3" in diameter or bigger, and after they flatten out, the disk should be at least 4" in diameter.  They are fine edibles.

There were lots of honey mushrooms brought in (Armillaria ostoyae).   I found them several places when picking for the show, but all I find out back are the sulfur tufts (Hypholoma fasciculare).  These are the brown mushrooms that grow in large clusters at the base of trees or on dead trees.  If in doubt as to which you have, take a small bite of one and chew it a little, then spit it out.  You can test any mushroom this way without any harm.  A honey mushroom tastes good, a sulfur tuft tastes very bitter.  The sulfur tufts are a little toxic, so do not eat them even if you like the bitterness.  Be wary about bringing honey mushrooms into your forest, because they are parasitic and kill trees.  An interesting thing about them is that they are one of the largest and longest lived organisms on the planet.  By some estimates, one A. ostoyae in Oregon may cover 2200 acres, weigh 600 tons, and be 2400 years old.  The forest is still growing over it, so the sky is not falling if you find it in your woods.

Lions manes, and bears heads (Hericium spp.) were found for the show.  They are the "toothed" fungi and look like a mass of thick white or yellowish hair growing on the side of a hardwood tree.  There is nothing else like them and they are delicious.  I wish I had them out back.

Chanterelles (Cantharellus formosus) were being found at higher elevations during the drought, but now they should fruit around here.  I hope the drought did not screw up their season.  Being a mycorrhizal fungi, Chanterelles get the nourishment to fruit from the trees with which they associate.  As the tree slows down for the winter, lots of carbohydrates go to the roots and nourish the fungi.  If the nourishment is out of phase with needed moisture, the fungi is short of a necessary component for fruiting.  Let's hope we still get a local season.

There were a couple of small cauliflower mushrooms (Sparassis crispa) but none of the huge ones that can appear.  If you found one before, look in the same place again, since they often reappear.

Lobster mushrooms (Hypomyces lactiflourum on Russula spp.) have been common during the drought and may continue to be around.

All of the species I have mentioned can be found with very good descriptions on the web.  If you are not sure about it, don't eat it.  If in doubt, search the web a little more or call a friend who is into wild mushrooms.  It is worth learning a species or two every year.

I am sure I am missing some of the good local mushrooms, but the important part is that now is prime time for gathering the wild ones, having mushrooms with meals, and drying or pickling them for the rest of the year.