Posted on 06/06/2005 4:06:56 AM PDT by Jet Jaguar
The rumors surrounding Alaska's potential mushroom boom this summer are growing like crazy, but the mushrooms have yet to sprout.
"I heard through the grapevine that 420 pounds may have been bought (Tuesday) in Tok but I haven't seen any," said Brooke Baker at the Great Alaska Mushroom Co., one of at least three buying outfits set up in Tok. "My guess is if anybody found any, we'd hear about it."
Alaska is anticipating a bumper crop of morel mushrooms this summer after last year's record fire season that burned more than 6.4 million acres across the Interior, including sizable chunks along the Steese and Taylor highways that could make for easy pickings.
The sponge-like morels, which are treasured in French cooking, typically sprout in burned areas a year after a wildfire and generate a cult-like following similar to the Grateful Dead. Commercial buyers and pickers travel around the country from fire to fire in search of morels.
Word has leaked out via mushroom Web sites on the Internet that this could be a banner year for mushroom picking in Alaska. Baker said pickers and buyers began showing up in Tok last week.
"I've been told so many scary stories about the mushrooms and the people that come with them, I don't know what to expect," said Baker, who has picked mushrooms in the past and decided to open up shop this summer as a buyer. "They told us to expect 3,000 to 4,000 migrant pickers."
How many people show up to pick and buy mushrooms in Alaska will depend on whether the mushrooms actually appear. It takes a proportionate combination of rain and sunshine for morels to sprout. If it's too dry or wet, the crop won't fruit, according to experts.
"We need to have about five to seven nights in a row of 45 to 50 degrees and some rain with sunny days following that," Baker said. "If we can get a few days in a row of that, I think we'd be doing pretty good."
Mushroom buyer Will Sweetsir of Oregon came to Alaska last week and set up camp at the Chatanika Lodge, about 25 miles north of Fairbanks at the edge of what was last year's 500,000-acre Boundary Fire.
After hanging a "Mushroom Buyers" sign in front of the lodge, Sweetsir has spent most of his time reading books and sipping beer beneath the cover of a white Quonset tent he set up. Empty baskets sat on a table next to him waiting to be filled with mushrooms. A few "demo mushrooms" sat in the bottom of one basket to show prospective pickers what they should be looking for.
A contractor for Alpine Foragers Exchange out of Portland, Sweetsir is confident the mushrooms will appear.
"This is perfect," Sweetsir said of the conditions. "It was really warm and it got really dry and then it rained like hell. It should be a great fruiting."
Trish Wurtz, a U.S. Forest Service research ecologist and affiliate research professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, agreed that conditions are ripe for a good morel crop.
"This rainy weather is just perfect," said Wurtz, who has studied morels for three years.
A co-worker went out Thursday and picked about 25 small ones in the Boundary Fire burn area, Wurtz said.
"They were just breaking through the burned crust," she said. "I think in the next week or two will be real good."
Typically, the mushrooms fruit or "flush" during a two- to three-week period from mid-June to mid-July. So far, though, mushrooms have been scarce.
Sweetsir is hoping to buy up to 2,000 pounds of wet morels a day.
"If this thing flushes like crazy that's nothing," said Sweetsir, who picked a handful of small morels Wednesday. "You can pick 30 or 40 pounds a day by yourself.
"It depends what people find, how big the flush is and if it all comes at once."
In Tok, the phone at the Great Alaska Mushroom Co. has been ringing off the hook.
"I've got people calling me almost every day asking me if there are any mushrooms," Baker said. "I've got a list of everybody who keeps calling and when I know there's mushrooms I'm going to call them."
Most callers want to know the same thing.
"How much are you going to give me a pound, that's what everybody asks," Baker said.
She plans to start out at $3 a wet pound, while Sweetsir said his starting price will be $4 a pound. Both buyers emphasized that price fluctuates from day to day, depending on the market.
"It's a world market," Sweetsir said. "If mushrooms come from somewhere else and flood the market, the price will go down."
Likewise, if there is a shortage of mushrooms elsewhere the price could go up.
"A lot depends on what happens in Europe," Sweetsir said.
Based on the rumors she has heard, Baker is optimistic.
"I've heard in Alaska we may set the price for the world market," she said. "Everybody else's mushrooms have been real wormy and not really good."
On Friday, Baker was still keeping her fingers crossed even though the 'shrooms had yet to show.
"If anybody finds any we're ready to start drying and buying," she said.
News-Miner staff writer Tim Mowry can be reached at 459-7587 or tmowry@newsminer.com .
Extra income opportunity ping!
Two bad seasons in a row in MO. Buying direct from pickers $12-$15 a pound here.
Fungus Among Us?
There is the same anticipation for some in Florida during a good cowpie year.
Ahh yes, I remember those summer daze..... :D!
Each year the first mushroom hunt would start of slow until I got used to spotting them again. After seeing the first one I would start seeing more that had blended into the scenery and missed on the first pass.
The other thing about it... it was ALWAYS 1st week of May.
This was one of my best seasons here in central Illinois. They sell for about the same here - $12 - $15
Depends on where you are. Here (Central Illinois) the last week of April and first week of May seems to be the best.
I can usually tell how long it's been since someone has been in a particular area by the age of the discarded beer/soda cans.
I've been pretty deep into some woods around here and still find garbage.
I'm no envirowhaco but the amount of trash left in the woods is shameful.
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