It’s that time of year again, Morel season. Even though there is a long list of things to do around the house, garden and vineyard, the call of the wild mushrooms lures us away to the sites of last year’s fires for a “Taste of the Wild”. This year we have been picking in the Bridge Creek Fire.
It continues to be a good area for picking and mapping. I have learned several things about making maps for use away from cell towers and a few about what information you can save even with access to cell towers. Also some of these pictures have links to Google Photos. When you follow them if a photo has location information in it Google will show you where it was taken. But enough geeky stuff.
We have gone from picking every mushroom we see no matter how small, to only picking bigger ones and usually those in groups. Somewhere along the line in a typical day fun becomes work. But we have managed to store a couple gallons of dried morels, sold some at the Farmers Market and to friends, traded for cheese and a massage, and eaten them almost every day. So it is exciting.
My favorite memory is when Cheryl cooked some up with garlic, butter and some olive oil in our VW camper van during the Farmers Market. With morels selling at near $70/pound in Seattle and at $40/pound in Spokane, we feel very lucky to find them and have some extra.
But like fishing, hunting and gold prospecting, there are stories of bigger and better mushrooms that we have not found yet… So far it has been good fun and good exercise. But it definitely has an addictive side that affects our other activities (AKA chores).