@Bimblesalong Sounds like you had an amazing time. 🙂
The mushroom's a type of crimson wax cap. It has a delicate nutty flavor but it's mainly used for it's texture and color and added to other mushrooms to liven them up, rather than as a standalone ingredient.
(You can take a few if there's lots together in the wild, usually forests or naturally grazed un-farmed grasslands, but general rule of thumb is to leave the majority to continue sporing as the loss of those sorts of lands is slowly making them, and swiftly, several other varieties, rarer.)
The much plainer meadow wax cap is plentiful, good flesh and texture, much more mushroomy and tasty as a standalone.
@LovesAutumnLeaves it's not a daft question. The only daft questions are generally the ones we fail to ask. I have a foot in a different world with a different set of 'automatic knowledge,' but I wouldn't know where to start with credit cards and mortgages etc, and tbh I'm a bit unsure about 'Netflix fires' which I'm sure is rather automatic knowledge for many on here. But we all bring our different bits together here in an appreciation of whatever we perceive to be the better things in life, especially at Christmas.
'Drifting' is the gathering up and bringing in the commoners (people who reside - or have right of residence- on common lands) depastured (not kept in fields) horses, donkeys, pigs, and cattle, and checking and attending to their health, in some places ensuring they're branded, ensuring any and all fees are paid, any reflective collar is safe and causing no bother, and (in the case of horses) cutting their tales in specific cuts, to show both that it's been done, by which agister, (official) and in which agisters patch the animals owner lives, as the horses and cattle are free to live in any part of the commons they fancy. (though pigs are driven back, as 'pannage' rights is about both fattening the pigs on acorns, and reducing the numbers that horses or cattle eat at once. Once the fee is paid, the animal is turned back out. (Romanies have their own tail cutting marks, and will usually bring their horses to the drift clipped to show and pay the fees)
Epping Forest, New Forest, Forest of Dean, and a few others have Verderers which is an ancient court system that rules some commons and forests and has been going since Medieval times.
The agisters are hired by the verderers. The verderers are half elected and half appointed and hold what's called the Atlas of Forest Rights.
Agisting means allowing grazing for money. The question is who 'owns' the land, so has the 'rights' to charge, and in some cultures can anyone 'own' land, or is common land free of ownership... From which the battle to uphold old rights continues to this day.
The agisters used to be Crown agents of the Royal courts who charged non commoners and Romanies for depasturiseing animals for grazing their horses, collecting fallen wood, mushrooms, acorns, and nuts, (it gets complicated when the church is involved and both double taxing and no taxing took place) and imprisoned those who didn't pay.
The agisters also have to deal with animals that get stuck or injured or are ill, or noways are hit by vehicles. Agister aware signs, on a dead animal or fallen tree tells you it's being dealt with.
Many maintain links to those with old 'straddling' commons, heath or moor rights, who are able to help ensure that animals stolen are more easily traced, and large scale commercial foraging doesn't go undetected.
The verderers and agisters 'balance out' with/against the Forestry Commission on trying to preserve rights checks and balances.
Dartmoor also runs on agisters but balances out with/against the Dartmoor National Park Authority.
The fresh cut tails, says that each drift at each part of a forest or or moor, has taken place, correctly, and all animals with the cut are healthy, treated etc.
I'll post some tail cut pics, - an ancient system of tail cropping, kind of like a vehicle tax disc, in that it tells lots of things about the animal or vehicle, in a simple form and that all is legit and paid for.