First Brown Field Mushroom Of The Season

I spotted the first brown field mushroom of the season. This variety is closely related to the white button mushroom you find in your local grocery store but these are larger. These mushrooms have a seemingly short growth window and it is rare to get more than one picking during the fall.

I would have happily grabbed this mushroom and changed dinner plans to mushroom omelets except for a few important facts.
1. This mushroom is a little past its prime, the gills are overripe and this tends to make the mushroom ‘mushy’ when cooked rather than keeping the mushroom texture. Two or three days ago would have been prime time to harvest.
2. (rather important to me) I did not find this mushroom, the herd of cows found it as they walked through the pasture. One of their hooves actually dislodged the mushroom from the ground. In essence, there is more than dirt on the mushroom and I just didn’t want to deal with that.
I’ll go around to my old field mushroom locations (areas that produced in the past) in the next few days to so see if I can get some that are younger without quite so much nature on them.