Mushrooms, Ferns, and Faries.

Autumn Forests

Autumn has hit the Southern Hemisphere with all its glory, frosty mornings and mist lined horizons. Our summery coastal town has been officially wrapped in a freezing blanket of clouds for the winter season, sometimes I wake up and look out my window and can't see the lawn in front, never mind the ocean a small distance away. But the cold weather has its perks; fluffy socks, hot chocolate and lots of cuddles!

I have to admit that Autumn is not very eventful in South Africa. All the indigenous trees happen to be evergreens, so we miss out on the leaves changing colour and falling delicately down, we also don't have Halloween in our Autumn! We celebrate that in Spring, maybe that's why nobody seems to enthusiastic about it around here. Corpses, gravestones, and ghosts don't go very well with flowers and baby birds! 

My favourite part about this cold spell is definitely the mushrooms. To be more precise, mushroom hunting, there is honestly nothing more rewarding than strolling through the forest as if on an Easter egg hunt, basket and all, and coming across a little circle of pine rings! 

The first time I ever remember foraging for mushrooms was when I was 4, I was living in England at that stage, which happens to have more different types of edible fungi than I can count on my fingers and toes! Enough, in fact, to happily live off. 

When I was little all I ever wanted was to find the fairy realm, which I believed at that stage was located in Ireland and to me, England was close enough to the fairy kingdom to have hidden magic. So there I was, barefoot, wild and grinning from ear to ear jumping through the forests searching for any sign of fairies, and I swore I saw them a few times! Just a tinkle here and there or a little trail of footsteps. 

I was very good at finding mushrooms then, or maybe it was just the surplus that grew over there. We'd go on hikes in the forest at least once a day and then randomly go off the path and stumble down hills and through the bushes, we always found this one type that grew in fairy rings, they were a light shade of purple with a white dust like look to them, and you knew if you found one that supper would be sorted that night ! 

In Plett, it happens to be a bit harder to come across a jackpot. Mainly because half the mushrooms will land you in bed with a stomach ache or worse, but after many years of learning and hunting I've become quite acquainted with the ones that taste nice and won't make you sick. 

We also have the problem that you won't find any in the natural forests, so you've got to find yourself an old pine plantation up in the mountains, sneak over a few fences and hide your car so the owners don't notice you're trespassing and hope that it's not logging season, you'll only find a good harvest in an old forest where the ground is damp and moss grows .

A few years back we found more mushrooms than we knew what to do with and ended up having to dry half of them and pickled the rest, which meant strings of them hanging in the kitchen for weeks and the lingering smell of vinegar and chillies, but that stash is still being used to this day.

Even though Autumn means no more bikinis and beach parties it does have its perks, I personally enjoy being forced to wear a million layers and three pairs of socks or sitting by the fire with a good book, it's definitely one way to disguise one's laziness!