How We Can Protect Nature in Our Community

Revival requires responsibility.

No politician or miracle man is going to protect us from the myriad of threats we face from industrial pollution in our food, air, and water. All we can do is adopt simple yet profound practices that can inspires others and shift our culture over time. And have fun doing it.

Our mission at Bay Staters for Creative Well-Being is to bring people together to learn how our own health is inextricably linked to the fate of every other person, animal, fungi, and plant that shares this impossible experiment called Earth.

In this article, we lay out some simple ways to make change and make an impact in the lives of thousands of critters who share your neighborhood (and improve your own life in so doing).

Foraging for Local Fungi

Eating a handful of mushrooms a day can reduce your risk of cancer and heart disease by nearly 45%, according to a meta-analysis of studies published in the Journal of Advanced Nutrition. This is because mushrooms are effectively a cholesterol-free meat that are high in fiber and beta-glucans that nourish our gut bacteria.

Moreover, mushrooms want you to eat their flesh, making them a wonderfully ethical and sustainable food source. The actual organism that fruits them, known as mycelium, uses your foraging habits to spread their spores and reproduce in nature. Moreover, foraging mushrooms is completely sustainable. A 27-year study of foraging found no adverse impacts to removing species from ecosystems for personal use.

Here are three common, easy to identify mushrooms in the Northeast and their details. To learn more, we encourage you to join one of our community mushrooms walks. Remember to never eat any mushroom unless you are 100% sure of its identity and that you can always reach out to us ([email protected]) for help. Make sure not to leave mushrooms out unrefrigerated overnight or in a hot car for more than a couple of hours because it can lead to bacteria build-up.

Hen of the Woods

Found Late August to October, usually at the base of oak trees, this mushroom is especially tasty and easy to identify (see below). Its caps are shaped a bit like feathers, emulating the look of a pheasant. To cook them, wash them thoroughly by rinsing them in your sink, lightly fry them in pan with a little oil of your choosing (we recommend olive oil or avacado oil for its health qualities) and seasoning (garlic salt works well) until they are dark brown and a little crunchy. Alternatively, soak them in a bowl of oil and seasoning overnight in your fridge, then bake them until crispy at 440 degrees farenheit for 15 to 20 minutes.

Oyster Mushrooms

Found year-round in shelf-like clusters, usually growing out decaying hardwood logs on the ground, these mushrooms are a classic (see below). As with all foraged mushrooms, rinse them off thoroughly. Like Hen of the Woods, oysters taste great pan-fried, breaded, or soaked in marinades. Because they come in a wide variety of colors, including blue, grey, white, and yellow-brown in the wild it is easier to misidentify them. You may want to join one of our events to pick up one of our grow kits to practice cultivating them to familiarize yourself with their shape, texture, and flavor.

Turkey Tail

Found year-round on dead logs and stumps, turkey tail mushrooms are a common “adaptogenic” mushroom that is put in fancy mushroom coffees. To make your own tea that can promote better immune system health, simply pluck them and boil them in water continuously for 45 minutes or more. This continuous boiling is important so that the nutrients in the mushrooms actually leave the cell walls. This process can be repeated for other mushroom varieties, such as chaga.

Turkey tail can come in a huge number of colors and patterns (see below for just one example), from oranges to blues to reds to browns. There are also mushrooms called “false turkey tail” and violet-tooth that have similar patterns. While these species are harmless for you to boil into tea, true turkey tail mushrooms have pores (see below) underneath their cap vs. spines (as in the case of violet tooth) or a flat surface (in the case of false turkey tail).

Protect Our Soil

Soil is effectively a living organism itself with rocks and sand as its skeleton, decaying leaves and plant material as its flesh, and the roots of plants and mushrooms (ie. mycelium) as its nervous system. In a single cubic inch of soil, there are more species than all of the plant and vertebrate animals in North America.

This article is in the process of being updated for the launch of our regenerative zine series. It should be done by the end of the day on April 20th.