I've had problems storing them in the past. They seem to lose potency after a few months & after about 6 months they're worthless, dried & stored in an airtight plastic container, in the dark at room temperature. I've had parasites on them too. Might not be much danger of me getting enough to store for too long this year, but I'm off psychs for a month, so I'll need to store some. They all die after the first couple of hard ground frosts, so I need to be picking them soon, but taking any in the next week or two is likely a bad idea for me.
Anybody got any storage tips? I've heard of people drying & crushing them to powder, packing tightly in airtight glass jars & freezing them. I'd rather not have class A's in my freezer though.
I really love the taste too, and the smell, I'd eat them even if they weren't psychedelic. I love walking into a cold damp field that stinks of magic mushrooms, can sniff them out in a good year.
Talking of sniffing them out, has anybody trained a dog to hunt for them? Might be a small problem with the dog eating them & having to deal with a trippy dog, but I bet they could find some.
I think they're stronger & provide a better trip than cubensis too. Feels great, like a real connection with nature, especially eating them fresh on the same day as I've picked them, they taste & feel so earthy. They grow in some really nice scenic places, if I can see the view through the fog, the fresh cold wet air, long wet grass, wind, drizzle, aching legs & trench foot feel amazing, then a big mushroom trip to finish off the day is perfect. It's much more satisfying than buying drugs, got to work to find them instead. It's seasonal too, helps to prepare me for winter, no danger of winter blues when my extremities have already been numbed in October & I've got enough mushrooms to trip every week. They only grow for a couple of months a year & I can't really store them for much longer than a couple of months either, that's a limiting factor. I've had to throw away bad mushrooms before, but I'd like to store them for a little longer, I'd like to try them in summer at least once in my life. Maybe they are a bit of a darker drug to be taken in autumn/winter & lsd is for spring/summer, maybe it'd spoil autumn for me a bit, but I'd still like to store some.
So? Any tips? Is crushing them & packing tightly in a sealed glass jar going to help? Anything else I can do, except freezing?
They can grow on any piece of grass with the right conditions, if it's cool & damp enough, so giving away locations is pointless. I also suggest you try seeding some likely locations with spores if there are none growing there, I've done it accidentally before. Just look for cool damp patches of grass, later in the season they'll move to warmer dryer areas too, as they become cooler & wetter. So with fields on hills, they'll often move down the hill & round to the south side of hills later on in the season. Need it to drop below about 10c at night & for there to have been some rain in the last few days.
If the grass is wet then they'll be bigger & a darker brown colour, smaller & beige if it's dry. The bigger size & darker colour is just water, they'll dry the same. After drying larger mushrooms have more overall drug content than smaller ones, but they're usually not as potent by weight. The stems seem less active than the caps, and can be a bit stringy when dried, I'm sure they still have something in though, I usually pull the end off the stem to make them easier to eat. I think they're a bit easier to spot when they're drier & lighter coloured, when they're wet they're a muddy colour.
When they die due to frost they turn black, they're still active, but not as pleasant. That marks the end of the season, no more will come after a couple of hard frosts.
Some years I've seen them in late spring/early summer, if it's been unusually cold & wet after a hot spell, but it's very rare & I never found more than 2 or 3. I've even had a couple from grass verges in some great years, but the ones near me just seem to be related lookalikes that probably aren't very active.
I've never found any below 200m above sea level, higher is usually better, especially in bad years.
