I can some, but most go into the dehydrator. They keep amazingly well for soups and stews in the winter. Just brought in my second flush. Almost as much as the first. They must like the offerings this year!
Also, i get gobs of those… beetles? Insects, anyway. No, they are harmless. I just rinse the mushrooms before processing and wash them off. No harm, no foul.
Wow! I might need to move our buckets. It’s mostly shady, but we got some trees trimmed so not as much as I’d like. I could move them into the woods…
No second flush on our oysters yet, and still very little on the lions mane.
We’ve already started saving up coffee grounds for the next try, though. Hopefully that will make a difference. 
I think probably rove beetles? They don’t look much like other beetles because the wing covers are short. The ones I have seen here, including on mushrooms, tend to be black but apparently some are partly brown or even red. Most kinds are predatory on other bugs, but I don’t know if that would apply here or not.
Yes! That’s what I saw. I’m glad they’re not eating my crop. They might even be feeding on the mushroom gill beetles.
Completely unrelated to making, crafting, creating, but nevertheless interesting speculation about rove beetles:
Blister beetles and the ten plagues
Sir
Several interpretations of the biblical ten plagues (Exodus 7:14–12:30) postulate that the insects of the third and fourth plagues gave rise to the boils of the sixth plague.
The notion that these were arthropod-borne epidemics, such as bubonic plague, trypanosomiasis, or leishmaniasis, is unlikely because the Israelites probably would not have escaped such widely transmitted diseases. Reports of invasions of blister-inducing rove beetles in southwest Asia suggest a novel explanation.
Many rove beetles (Paederus spp, Staphylinidae) have a toxic haemolymph called paederin that causes painful necrotic blisters when a beetle is crushed on the skin.
Rove beetle populations are generally small but under the right environmental conditions, they can reach spectacular size. At night, beetles are attracted to lights and commonly descend on inhabited areas, blackening walls. The ensuing vesication can injure thousands of people and has forced the evacuation of entire communities.
The first two plagues may have produced ideal conditions for massive breeding of Paederus. In the first plague, “the water of the Nile turned to blood”, probably because of a bloom of toxic phytoplankton (a red tide). The anoxic conditions in the river killed the fish and forced “frogs onto the land of Egypt”, causing the second plague.
Rove beetles, which breed in the marshy banks of the Nile and scavenge tadpoles and carrion, were provided heaps of decaying frogs on which their numbers could flourish. Thus arose the third and fourth plagues, in which “grievous swarms of insects invaded Pharaoh’s palace and the houses of Egypt”. Rove beetle swarms are normally focal, which may explain why the insects plagued the Egyptian community but spared the neighbouring Israelites.
Soon thereafter, “boils ([sh’chin]: boils or eruption) breaking forth with blains ([avahbu’ot]: blisters or boils) on man and beast” formed the sixth plague. Paederin-induced blisters erupt 1–4 days after exposure; thus, victims frequently do not associate the beetles and skin lesions causally and think of them as separate events.
We propose that the third and fourth plagues were an invasion of Paederus, probably P alfierii, a blister-causing rove beetle that lives in the Nile delta, whose population exploded under the conditions of the first two plagues. The swarm was localised to the humid Nile delta area, affecting only the Egyptian community, and the subsequent outbreak of blisters, occurring several days later, was perceived as a separate event—the sixth plague.
Karl Rove beetles…
If you have surplus mushrooms Ikea can always use them.
For our last camping trip, we made some fire starters from dryer lint, toilet paper rolls, and paraffin wax. They worked brilliantly, even after it rained our first night and all the wood we could collect was wet. We didn’t even need any paper. Each TP roll makes 3 fire starters.
The limiting factor seems to be the dryer lint (household of 2) so I want to start collecting for the next batch.
My question to fellow craftyboingers- anyone know of a relatively dust-free way to keep that stuff? Just having a plastic bag to stuff it into makes the bathroom all dusty.
Gallon-size ziploc does the trick for me.
I like using the leftover plastic containers in which I buy my bulk baking soda. It’s free Tupperware!
Thanks, both!
Now I’m curious - what are @knoxblox , @anon87143080 and others saving dryer lint for? Crafty mutants want to know!
Not actually saving dryer lint, but the containers are big, and good for storing odd stuff, like clothespins!
ETA: Whenever I need lint, I just look in my belly button.
I save it for starting fires too. Its free, reliable and portable
I’ve been using fat wood to start our fires. I get a big box every couple years. Fat wood is pine wood from pine stumps. It’s filled with natural resin and can be easily lit.
That being said, we get a crap ton of lint because we wash a few hundred small towels every week for our business.
How do you mix the paraffin with the lint. I’d love to try that.
My summer Hefeweizen is ready to drink! Lovely notes of banana (just look at it) and cloves.
I need to set up a beer trade with @anon33932455
Holy crap that’s a great idea. We all hear constantly about how flammable the stuff is. I never thought to use it for that property. 
I could steal some of my spouse’s mead for trade!
That beer looks lovely
We did a pretty simple version. Heat up 1 lb of paraffin wax in a double boiler set up. While that heats, cut 5 tp tubes into 3 shorter cylinders each, place upright on wax paper and stuff full of dryer lint.
Use an extra tube for wicks - cut little rectangles and insert into each cylinder, leaving about 1/2 sticking out.
When wax is melted, pour over lint.
Let cool and add more, if desired. We flipped after cooled and added more.
Like I said, they worked amazingly well! They burned for a good 10 minutes, plenty of time to catch the wet twigs we were using for kindling.
Only down side, and it wasn’t bad, is it was very hot on our paddle out to the site, so they melted a tiny bit in the ziploc bag we had them in. I think I might wrap them individually in newspaper if we’re doing another long paddle or hike in hot weather.
I’ve got some ESB left, a gallon of sage-limoncello, and some 18 month old mead. Started this today:
1lb lightly toasted walnuts, 1/4c honey, 750ml VSOP brandy. It’ll sit for a few weeks, get strained, have a brown simple syrup mixed in, and then serve as an aperitif.
With @anon23281680 we might need a trading circle.
I also made this today. A 3’x10’x10”h “feeder” for the chickens. I’ll plant a bunch of tasty plants for them (mint, wormwoood, garlic, nasturtiums, marigolds, etc). It’ll grow to where they can nibble but not destroy the plant.
Noted. Do not rub rove beetles into skin. Got it. 
