If you enjoy eating or hunting the illusive morel mushroom, I can only say if you don’t get your belly full this year, there is little hope for you. The gods of the earth have blessed us this year with more morels than I think I have ever seen. And, they are wonderfully delicious.

I have been a couple of times, and had to quit and come home because I almost began to feel greedy. I think I have had them about every way imaginable. I had a small trout or two in the freezer that a nephew gave me, and I wrapped one in aluminum foil with some butter and garlic and morels, and put it on the grill. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

This past year we have been using some morels from last year that I had dried in a food dehydrator, and they have been good, as well. So, some of the extra bounty that I had this year, that I didn’t give to friends who love them, but don’t get the opportunity to get out and find them, went into my food dryer.

They give off an interesting aroma when they are being dried. I don’t find it at all unpleasant, but some do. My house mate is not crazy about it, but it is much better than what we have been smelling along the highways, recently.

Here Come Da Sludge

Get ready for it. Coming to a pasture or field as close to you as your property line. Human excrement, spread on the fields as free fertilizer. Have you smelled this "sludge" they are putting on the fields and grasslands? I have been told that some of it could be chicken litter. But, it doesn’t smell like any chicken house I ever cleaned out. Honestly, I thought something had died in the trunk of my car.

Is this a great country or what? And you thought that when you moved from the city to the country, you could leave all that ‘stuff’ behind? Nope, they are sending it along by truck, arriving daily. And, just think, you no longer have to spend your farm subsidy check on fertilizer. You can get free human waste to make the grass grow. And, it has been processed so you can hardly tell what it is.

Yeah, right! I keep a little vegetable garden at my brother-in-law’s house, where he has a deer-proof fence. I can hardly work the garden this year without a gas mask. There must be 5 or 6 truckloads of this stuff in a pile just over the fence.

I recall the words of the late Harrison Powers, when he was asked in a hearing, years and years ago, about the application of sludge to Rappahannock farmland. They asked Harrison what the sludge smelled like. Harrison said, "It smells like money."

And, so it does, But, do you wonder, as I do, if the people spreading this ‘crap’ are also spreading it around their own homes, where their families live and play and get their drinking water?

What will be the long term effects of putting this on the fields? Will it leach into the groundwater? Why shouldn’t it; it’s soluble. And toxic or not, what is that going to do to the taste and purity of your drinking water, not to mention our streams and rivers? That is any body's guess. It may not kill you, but, you may not find it to your liking.

Remember the prophetic words of the Native American chief, Seattle, of the Duwanish tribe, speaking about the passing from this earth of his people. "The whites, too, shall pass. Perhaps, sooner than others. They will die in their sleep, suffocated in their own waste."

Like I said, is this a great country or what?