Last Possible Hunt Before Freeze

The weather has turned colder and the temperature dipped into the 20’s at night. Fearing the cold will end the wild mushroom gathering season, I went out into the forest for a final mushroom foray.

The hunt began on the far west ravine of our forest. I walked/scrambled up the steep inclines with two buckets, my trusty mushroom knife on a lanyard around my neck, both dogs Jackson and Butler rushing through the wildlife trails, and my library audio book reading chapter after chapter to keep me company. It was a foggy morning when I had begun the trek at the bottom of the hill but by the time I was half-way to the top, the fog was gone and blue sky danced through breaks in the canopy above me.

Many of the big leaf maple trees and vine maples had dropped their colorful array of foliage so the hunt for the Chanterelles was much slower than a week earlier. Even the wild mountain blackberry vines with their bright red color helped hide the mushrooms. Large patches of salal, Oregon grape, and sword fern had to be combed through to make sure there were no hidden mushrooms so it took quite a while to get to the top of the hill. Going up this first area, I had only found enough mushrooms to fill one of the buckets a fourth of the way. They were small button mushrooms because I had picked this section of the forest a couple of times since the season began. Once at the top of the hill, there were specific areas that I wanted to hunt.

One spot was the tree that Mike fell a couple of years ago during logging. Because it was growing inside a rotting stump, the tree had to be cut high off the ground. Mike had to stand on top of the bulldozer to be tall enough to do the falling. That story can be read in its entirety at https://schmidlinangusfarms.com/creating-a-platform. When referring to this tree we all know what and where we are when we say its the tree that needed a platform to fall.

I hunted around the stump and the surrounding trees of that area, then worked my way around several big trees in close proximity before working my way back down the hill in a zig-zag motion a little further north than the trails I went up the hill. I meandered and climbed, slid and skidded all while holding my two mushroom buckets carefully so I didn’t drop any. The two buckets were nearly half-full at this point and I knew that I would be getting into some good mushroom patches before getting to the bottom of the hill.

As I rounded the rotting stump of an old fir tree, I noticed a mushroom growing at the base. At first I thought it was a white Chanterelle, but as I got closer I could see it was a much more elusive mushroom, it was a cauliflower.

Cauliflowers are very distinctive and beautiful. With all my time in the forests in the area, I have only seen a handful of cauliflower mushrooms, personally I have only harvested three previously and those had all been sold commercially because I never investigated how wonderful these mushrooms were. I decided this one would be the one that was going to be a new culinary adventure for me.

This cauliflower must have weighed about 3 pounds and filled the top of one of my buckets. It was very white, a sure sign that it is high quality, they turn more yellow and brown as they age. With a good patch Chanterelles growing close by, I filled the second bucket that I was packing. I closed my knife and put it in my pocket. I was done with picking for the day because I was out of room and only needed to scramble to the bottom of the hill with my treasures.

The story tomorrow will tell about the cleaning, recipes, and kitchen hints.

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