Friday small groups work

Betsy carrying the weeds.

Our prunings from the raspberry

This Friday, our small group went to work and learn with Wm.  (No, that is not a typo...  His name is "Wm").  He has a little more than an acre of conservation land in the town of Amherst under cultivation and enjoyed sharing his work, theories and tasks with us.  We worked on pruning his raspberry bushes and weeding the elderberry, gooseberry and currants.

Wm's roadside find

After we finished up our work at his plot, we drove to collect apples for making cider.  On the way, Wm spotted some osyter mushrooms by the side of the road and we stopped to harvest them (with the permission of the land owner, of course).  They were beautiful blooms of fungus protruding from a stump.  The mushroom is just the "flower" or more closely "The fruit" of the fungus organism.  The actual fungus is spreading inside the tree (or the soils, if it is found on the ground) absorbing its nutrients from living or decaying matter, not from the sun.  He gave us some instructions for preparing this type of mushroom which included lots of cooking--consuming raw mushrooms is not a practice he recommends.  He also showed us that it probably best to leave some of the mushroom on site to allow for the spreading of spore--fungi's answer for seeds.


We arrived at a home where Wm has an arrangement:  he prunes their apple trees and they allow him to collect the apples that he wants.  Boy, were there a lot of apples!  And each of the three varieties we harvested were so delicious and unique.  Sorry, I have no names for them.

Justin climbing the tree with Betsy's encouragement

Collecting apples

We returned to Wm's home and ate our lunch, discussing land-leasing ideas as well as fermenting various beverages.  After lunch, we washed our apple harvest and crushed and pressed the fruit.  The resulting cider was an exquisite mix of the three apples. We were as happy to gather our gallons to take back to the farm as Wm was to take a gallon into his home.  He is a great source of information on so many subjects--we are fortunate to count him among our instructors.

Justin turning the cider press.

Brian smiles at the motorized apple crusher