New Update Video: House Design Plans, Clearing Brush, & Mushroom Foraging

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This past weekend we went out to our property to work on clearing some brush around our house building site and film a quick update video. I’ve been posting new recipe videos on our youtube channel, but I realized that I hadn’t given any update on our living situation in the form of a video.

While we were there we checked our wildlife camera and foraged for mushrooms to take photos of and practice our mushroom identification. We found quite a variety of mushrooms and even an edible golden chanterelle! (light orange mushroom in upper right corner)

We’re still trying to identify all of them, but I believe the reddish ones are Russula Atropurpurea, the little black one is a type of ink cap, and I’m almost positive the light orange one in the upper right corner is a golden chanterelle.

Our wetland is covered with moss and mushrooms right now.

These are either Gymnopus or Armillaria aka honey mushrooms. We didn’t take a spore print of these so we can’t be sure.

Here’s a close-up of What I Believe is a chanterelle.

Teeny Tiny Pacific Tree Frog

Zeller’s Boletes

We just submitted our design plan for building permits, so hopefully in a few months we can begin the building process. Until then we’re enjoying the last few sunny days here before the rainy season sets in for a while.

I hope everyone else had a great weekend and got to spend some peaceful time outdoors. I’ll be back with a brand new recipe very soon!

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Walking around our hazy forest & a big bunny yawn

This past Sunday, we drove out to our property in the forest to walk around and see how it looks in the hazy, smoky wildfire weather that we've been experiencing this past week here just outside of Seattle, Washington. 

NASA IMages of the wildfires and smoke

The smoke was so thick that the sun could only break through occasionally, but when it did the quality of the light became almost cinematic and orange-tinged. I didn't bring my camera out but I had my cell phone, so I took a few photos anyway. 

Our house building site

We're just about ready to submit our building permits and hopefully start building our house within the next year, but we're in no big rush and we're making sure to spend a lot of time on the house design before finalizing everything. 

The land we purchased is seven acres in an old logging forest with some evidence of old growth tree stumps. One particular stump and downed tree that we have is 600 years old! The majority of the trees currently standing are new growth evergreen trees, around 50-60 years old.

The climate in the Pacific Northwest makes our forest a temperate rainforest, full of lush ferns, evergreen trees, and moss blanketing everything.

sword ferns and mossy logs

scraggly moss-covered maple near the wetland

View on the Noth side, looking towards thousands of acres of logging forest owned by of Department of Natural Resources 

orange smoke-diffused light on the trees

It can be a little difficult to traverse the land sometimes with the occasionally unstable, perpetually decaying forest floor.

The meadow full of sword ferns and alder trees in front of our house building site

It's not quite mushroom season here yet- we usually see the most mushrooms/fungi here in October once the rains begin, but we did find a few on this particular walk. I'm not sure exactly what this one is, but it looks like a kind of shelf fungi. 

Black Bear, wildlife camera

We have a wildlife camera tied around a tree facing a path that we, as well as many of the forest animals, frequently walk. We've seen black bears and deer so far, but we also have cougars, which we have yet to see, fortunately. 

Deer, wildlife camera

When we got home in the evening, our bunny Violet, who is not used to spending much time alone, was very happy to see us and made sure she was the center of attention and cuddled with for the rest of the night. 

Anthony found himself with our video camera in a slow-motion setting at just the right moment to capture this very relaxed stretch and slightly terrifying yawn. 

We're staying inside now that the smoke has become much more thick over the past few days and trying to minimize the negative health implications of breathing in all of those particles, but it was interesting to see how it changed the light in the forest and spend a little time out in nature.

I hope everyone else has had a relaxing weekend and that you're safe and far away from all of the wildfires and heavy smoke. 

I'll be back with more recipes (and recipe videos) very soon!