Here in the village where I go to school, the season of fall is beautiful. Not just for the leaves or the last rays of warm sun, but also for the harvest. I went with a friend on two harvest trips: one to gather mushrooms by the fields, one to gather apples from an open picking garden. My friend taught me how to identify a common edible mushroom called “Parasol”, which means “sun umbrella” in French. It grows in several parts of France and Germany and can be up to 30cm tall and have big round hoods. I can see why these mushrooms are called umbrellas.
Then, we packed our baskets and bags and drove to a small apple tree garden in the village. One single tree had produced so many apples that even 10 or 20 big shopping bags couldn’t carry them all. The basket and bag we had brought were overflowing, yet it looked as if we hadn’t even touched the area.

For the mushrooms, I cooked a fresh stew. The mushrooms have a unique nutty flavor, which blends great with butter, honey, and the veggies I had.
As for the apples, I made some of them into fresh apple sauce and the rest into apple chips. I got to borrow a spiral cutter and food dryer to do those things. And now, I have a healthy snack for the next few weeks :)

Also, we are renovating the party room at our seminary. We want to cover one wall and the bar with reclaimed wood panels. So, I and two other girls started cutting the boards to size and sanding them. It was a bit of a makeshift setup on the back porch outside the party room. And one of the saws had a faulty angle gauge: In order to get a simple 90° cut, we had to set it to “+2,5°”. This took some trial and error to figure out. But all in all, it was quite a fun work day: The unprocessed wood looked useless, but after trimming and sanding, it revealed its inner beauty. There’s still lots of work ahead of us. But I am glad I can already see the potential. Exciting!