Daytrip to Lacombe

Yesterday, Allan and I drove down to Lacombe to visit my sister and her family. We usually visit them on our way to somewhere else, but it was much nicer just making the relatively short drive for the sake of spending the day there.

Our first order of business (after a taco feast for lunch) was to go out into the woods behind their house to look for wild edible mushrooms. I took pictures of several mushrooms we came across to ID them later, and we picked a few that we knew for sure were edible.

My nephew Micah holding up a green Russula mushroom

Northern Russula (red) and 2 green russula

We brought back 5 mushrooms in total, but only ate the three above. One mushroom we collected was edible but much too mature to be any good. The name of it escapes me – a bolete of some kind? Anyway, it was remarkably spongy. When my brother-in-law squeezed it, it oozed out an enormous amount of water, and then left a sad, flat, tasteless little piece of mushroom. We also picked a “mystery mushroom” which was small and white, which he identified as a small puffball and apparently ate after we left. The northern russula was the tastiest of the bunch.

Saskatoons found on our walk through the woods

We found (and ate) several raspberries on the way as well

There was some excitement along our walk when I accidentally stepped in an ant hill and was attacked by a hoard of angry ants biting at my ankles and crawling into my shoes. Not cool. I’m sure I looked really dignified and awesome throwing off my shoes and running through the grass slapping myself. My companions were thankfully more sympathetic than mocking, though.

After the foraging adventures, we headed to Billyco Junction U-Pick for strawberries. It was a great farm with a huge number of very productive plants.

Rows of strawberry plants

Anders and Nathan in the field

Yummmm

Me and Allan with our haul

Berry glamour shot

After heading back to their house, we relaxed with some pizza and then shot arrows at the pizza boxes, because, well, shooting stuff is fun. Although I mostly just shot the dirt around the pizza box. And by mostly, I mean exclusively.

Jenny takes aim

All in all a pretty great day. Many thanks to our hosts for showing us a good time. And now, to figure out what to do with all these strawberries…