AN ABUNDANCE OF MUSHROOMS

March has brought a pleasant start to the autumn months. Small falls of rain dampened the ground followed by days of cool, misty weather providing the ideal temperature for field mushrooms to grow naturally on our farm land.

My earliest memories of gathering field mushrooms began when as a young child I accompanied my grandmother across the grass flats beside the Myall Creek flowing down from the Bunya Moutains. It was Gran who taught me how to gather the mushrooms and tell the difference between them and other forms of fungi. Then with our 2 gallon stainless steel milking bucket filled with mushrooms we would proudly carry them home. A few of the large flat mushrooms would be sprinkled with salt and placed on the hot iron top of the wood fired kitchen stove  where they would sizzle and turn black before we popped this treat into our mouths. That night the family enjoyed a thick mushroom soup for dinner.

Those were the days when factory farmed mushrooms were not available in our shops and tinned mushrooms were tasteless small champignons.

Walking out one morning this week I spotted wild field mushrooms growing in the grass beside our home Das Helwig Haus B&B.

Wild mushrooms

In this post I will tell you how to gather such mushrooms, explain the differences between them an other poisonous varieties of fungi and then how to prepare wild field mushrooms for meals. Read the rest of this entry »

CLIMATIC DIFFERENCE

My garden is different to most Queensland gardens due to the altitude of the Granite Belt. Most Queensland gardens are located in tropical or subtropical climates, but the Granite Belt of Queensland is the only region of this State with a temperate climate. The majority of the gardens in Queensland only know two seasons, the ‘WET’ and the ‘DRY’ whereas here on the Granite Belt we have four distinct seasons as in the Northern Hemisphere.

Usually our winters are dry so we seldom get snow and for the same reason we frequently experience more winter frosts than Victoria. Brisbane and Melbourne are the capital cities of Queensland and Victoria. Coastal Brisbane has a subtropical climate but the altitude of Das Helwig Haus (about 850metres above sea level) and our position on the western side of the Great Dividing Range create our much cooler climate.

State capital cities

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