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(Chanterelle) pickers protect secrets
From The Oregonian, Nov. 15, 1981
Pickers protect secrets Mushrooming often turns a tidy profit BREMERTON, Wash (AP) - With the economy being what it is, picking mushrooms and selling them may well be the biggest season industry in Kitsap and Mason counties these days. In one week in October, Jeff Logan, 23, of Belfair, snapped up 368 pounds of mushrooms and sold them, at up to $1.25 a pound, to Bigfoot Evergreens in Belfair. It earned him a $25 weekly bonus from the Belfair firm, and Logan says this isn't even a good year for mushrooms. Last year, Logan said, "We were making $60 and $70 a day pretty easy, and we were only picking maybe two, three hours a day." Bud Kennedy and his boys - Bill, Dan, John and Mike - run Bigfoot Evergreens and buy mushrooms for the Olympia Mountain Mushroom Co. of Carlsborg, Wassh. The pickers are called ‘shroomers. Logan says anyone can do it. "It only took us a couple of hours to figure out what to pick and find out where to pick them," he said. He and his partenr, Joe Pruitt, 19, also of Belfair, are picking chanterelles right now, but hope soon to be finding the big-money fungus - the Matsutake, or White Pine mushroom. Logan and the Kenedys are generaous with advice on how to identify chanterelles and other edible mushrooms. And they'll tell you how to pick them and what types bring the best money. But there's one thing they won't tell you - where they find THEIR mushrooms. Ask Logan where he picked that bucket of glowing golden chanterelles and he'll say with a grin: "In the woods." ‘Shroomers are secretive of their most productive spots. What they will tell you is where in the woods you are likely to find chanterelles. "Look for areas that are covered by sparse salal growth," said Bill Kennedy, 26. "For old logs and large hemlock and Douglas fir trees, on hillsides. I've never seen them growing around bracken fern." Kennedy said the chantarelles they buy are picked up weekly and shipped to a processing plant near Port Angeles. They're packed in brine and shipped to Germany, where folks have a positive craving for this pungent flavorsome, fungus. "The biggest chantarelle producer in the world is Poland. It's like pretzels and beer here, only over there, I hear it's chanterelles and beer. They don't eat or drink anything without eating chanterelles with it," he said. "But they're only getting about 30 percent of their normal crop thisyear. Trouble is, we're having a really bad year, too. This year, we're buying maybe 6,000 pounds a week. Last year, we were buying anywhere between 3,500 to 6,000 pounds a DAY, man." Kennedy has been a ‘shroomer for about seven years, ong enough to remember the last time - about five years ago - that there was a sizable crop of White Pine mushrooms. "I made $1,200 in two hours," he said. "Those things only come once, maybe every five years and they say this is the year for ‘em." "They grow on ridge caps, in gravelly soil with mediocre timber cover, right around the drip line of trees. I've never seen them growing on flat ground." He said the Matsutake is highly valued in Japan, and that most of the picking grounds there were destroyed years ago by overpicking. Kennedy says more than 300 ‘shroomers sell their pickings to the Belfair firm. "The thing that's amazing is, a beginning stands just as much chance as I do. You can walk over a hill and find a whole mess of them." The stable wild mushroom is the chantarelle. It is found throughout the Northwest woodlands in great abundance, usually from early September through mid and Late November. The Kennedy's pay $1.25 a pound for "yellows" and 75 cents for "whites." To the untrained eye, they all look the color of egg yolk, but Kennedy says it doesn't take long to become a chanterelle expert. "The easiest way to spot a chantarelle is to look at the ‘gills.' No other mushroom has gills that look like it." The gills are blunt and folded, usually forked and cross-veined, the same color as the cap. They run down the stem. ‘Shroomers say that once you can recognize a chanterelle, you'll never mistake it for another mushroom. They have smooth, rounded or ruffled upturned caps which vary in color from yellowish white to deep gold. The cap is often vase-or horn-shaped. Logan says there is only one problem with ‘shrooming: "They do taste good. You get yourself a saucepan and put some butter in it, and you get the butter melted and then you cook them until all the water comes out and the butter is back to its original color. I'll usually keep a pound or two for myself." Comment by poster: until I read this article, I didn't think the commercial harvest of mushrooms in the PNW began until 1980. This seems to indicate that chanterelles, at the least, were being harvested commercially in Washington in 1976 or so. And it's possible that morel mushroom harvesting began even earlier than that! Daniel B. Wheeler www.oregonwhitetruffles.com |
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