Late Chanterelles

I had dropped off some fresh Chanterelle mushrooms for one of my brothers the other day, he was surprised that I was still finding them this late in the season and asked about the ability to keep harvesting. When I said that the mushrooms would continue to grow until the ground froze into the mycelium mat ( the vegetative part of a fungus or fungus-like bacterial colony). When he stated that even in the valley they have had frosty nights, I said though the temperature had been as low as 25 a couple of our nights, the cold had not sunk into the ground below the 100 +  foot tall fir tree stands that the mushrooms grow under.

With the couple of very unusual Chanterelles that were found in July after that dumping rainstorm, and now still picking into December, this has been an usually long season with breaks of weeks or months between fruiting times for the mushrooms.

The forest is very wet after this last week of wet storms coming in from the coast. The ups and downs of the hill where I follow elk trails and old skid roads make for tricky trekking while still staying upright and not spilling the bucket of mushrooms. I haven’t always been successful on this.

The picking this week has not been as plentiful as during the October and November months, and the mushrooms themselves are holding a lot more moisture that the earlier harvests so they are not the prime, firm mushrooms that I found before. Still these are great for cooking up fresh, making batches of portion sized frozen cubes with a quick saute, for pickling and canning, also for sharing which is my favorite sport.

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