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There’s money in mushrooms

Flavourful fungi found in the fall forest

Foragers fill forests in fall looking for fungi

A few year’s back, about this time of year, my neighbour, who is Japanese, quietly knocked at my door to show me a small basket of mushrooms that she had harvested herself earlier that day. The mushrooms, two to three of them, as I remember, were pretty stinky, kind of like soft French cheese with a hint of spice. Matsutake mushrooms, also called pine mushrooms, are highly prized gourmet fare in Japan, especially in autumn. These mushrooms had been harvested up near Pemberton but it had been a long hard slog of a hike to get them.

Misuzu returned a little while later with a small bowl of steaming rice studded with finely sliced mushrooms. I eagerly tried them, after all such a delicacy is extremely expensive in Japan. The cooking had softened their pungent fragrance but the texture was solid, even meaty. I ate the rice and the only word I choose to accurately describe the dish is "funky". I thanked Misuzu for her generosity and admitted that I lacked a taste for the refined Japanese delicacy. I asked her to bring me along next time she went hunting for them. She laughed and said it was pretty hard to find them – best if you use your sense of smell. No kidding.

There is money to be made hunting for wild, edible mushrooms. It is a competitive business. Commercial mushroom picking in British Columbia is estimated to produce $10 million to $20 million in revenue, annually. Of the edible mushrooms harvested, pine mushrooms, which are exported to Japan, are the big ticket fungi. Chanterelles and morels, exported to Europe, can also bring in a lot of cash. Minor amounts of other edible mushrooms are also harvested.

During harvest season, roughly mid-September to mid-November, buying stations pop up wherever mushrooms are to be found and pickers head into the woods. Seasoned matsutake pickers who know what to look for and have a keen memory for harvesting areas have been known to make $1,200-$1,300 a day for literally digging around in the dirt. By following the harvest down the coast, starting in late August in Washington or Oregon, through California and into the hills of Mexico by early December, mushroom pickers have been known to make $40,000 (U.S.) for their work. "Known to make", though an arbitrary description, is nevertheless apt as the commercial market is highly volatile and completely set by the Japanese market and its demand for the import.

Japanese matsutake or Tricholoma matsutake are increasingly difficult to come by in Japan; the decline is not completely understood but is thought to be due to the change in species composition in the pine forests caused by the shift from wood to natural gas for fuel. B.C.’s pine mushroom, Tricholoma magnivelare , is closely related to the Japanese variety. Pine mushrooms are harvested in many different countries and Japan imports from all of them. Demand for the pines through the autumn season fluctuates causing the price paid per pound to jump all over the place, from as little as $2/lb. to as high as $200/lb. In 1993, one pound of pine mushrooms sold for $600 (U.S.) at auction in Tokyo and a single, top quality mushroom sold for $350 that same year. This year there is a glut on the market as North America is experiencing bumper crops. The prices have been kept low up until last week, where, at the end of the season, the demand increases along with the price – as I write this the price is $14/lb.

Shirley Pietila runs a pine mushroom station in Devine, just north of Pemberton. She has been a pine mushroom buyer since 1978, purchasing from about 30 pickers in any given year. During season, trucks come up daily from Vancouver to collect the mushrooms, which are cleaned and packed and put on an airplane to Japan to be ready for auction the following day. Freshness is key.

There is a tentative agreement between the Forest Industry’s timber management and the B.C. Forest Service to protect stands of timber to promote mushroom growth in the Pemberton area.

Pine mushrooms grow on the roots of various pine, spruce and fir species, normally harvested for timber. The trees and mushrooms have a symbiotic relationship – the tree provides complex sugars to the fungi while the fungi, through its subterranean mycelium, increases the surface area by which water can be taken up by the tree. In other words, the trees need to be living to support a mushroom crop.

One statistic I read, although research on the subject is often anecdotal as studies on timber management and mushroom conservation are only recently being conducted, noted that a pine mushroom harvest can be worth four times as much money as the harvest of timber from the same area. Shirley pointed out that, with proper harvesting techniques and as little environmental disturbance as possible, pine mushrooms will resurface in the same spot, year after year. That is, given the right weather conditions – mushrooms are very sensitive to variations in rain and temperature.

Japanese sawmill workers in the Pemberton area introduced pine mushrooms as edible to both native and non-native communities during the 1940s, although it was a traditional food of the Stl’atl’imx and Nlaka’pamux First Nations before that. Shirley learned about edible mushrooms from the local First Nations when she moved to Devine in 1966. She laughs when I ask her what the hunting terrain is like: "Steep, it don’t come easy you know." She buys pines and chanterelles in the fall and morels in the spring and she notes that "some years you make lots of money, other years you just get lots of exercise."

It also takes a while to get what she calls "mushroom eyes". The best pines, graded as No. 1s, are buttons (the cap has not yet opened up) that will not have broken through the surface of the forest floor. Instead, you are hunting for little mounds or cracks in the soil, and these in dense, steeply sloped and coarsely textured soil. Then there are the animals to watch out for. Hunting in these parts has lead to encounters with both grizzlies and cougars. But, compared to our neighbours south of the border, we have a lot less to worry about as pickers there always carry a gun – not for defence against wild animals but to ensure that other pickers don’t encroach on their picking territory.

In Oregon, the USDA Forest Service has implemented mandatory picking permits ($200 per season), strict buying station closing times (10 p.m.) and patrolling rangers who enforce the forest service rules. These strategies were implemented after too many violent altercations between pickers, intimidation and threats to other pickers and an overall unruly atmosphere in the buying station camps that involved too much alcohol and even prostitution. The matsutake harvest of the wild west parallels that of the gold rush a century before.

John McDowell, a mushroom picker in Powell River, admits to carrying a machete, not as a weapon but a tool to help lift the soil in his search for fungi. He recounts meeting up with fellow pickers in the bush who had travelled from Terrace to harvest in Powell River; the other pickers were far more successful with the harvest than the locals. Standing in the middle of the forest the pickers exchanged polite words. The Terrace pickers had done their research at the Forest Service office looking for areas of forest that had burned approximately 50 years before. The white, ash layer, a result of wildfire, is necessary for mushroom propagation.

John picks all sorts of edible mushrooms for the commercial market as well as salal, a broad-leafed evergreen that is used as background filler in flower arrangements. He is interested in utilizing the forest’s bounty for commercial benefits, particularly because it is a reusable resource. It is important, he advocates, to ensure that harvesting methods preserve the environment.

Many edible mushrooms have twins in the forest that are poisonous and even fatal if eaten. There are deaths every year due to the incorrect identification of mushrooms that are eaten. It is important to check specimens against more than one field guide and best if you are able to check them with an experienced mushroom picker.

John regularly conducts seminars on edible mushrooms. He will be teaching a seminar on salal and mushroom harvest in Squamish at the Brennan Park Sports Centre Saturday, Nov. 15th. Registration needs to be done in person but for more information phone 604-898-3604.