Living in a Recent Wildfire Harvesting Morel Mushrooms 

Awesome, we will be out there soon as well! Not sure if you'll be around to watch next week since you might be out searching for morels yourself, but we have a short series coming on rainforest pine mushroom harvesting - one of our personal favorite mushroom hunts.

@@northernwildharvest we have may 19-31 off for vacation.I’ve already started searching here in Grande Cache but nothing yet.I’ll be watching next week for sure thanks and much success to you .👍

May the morels find you in force. Hope you have an awesome year.

Carrying the packframe tires us out but when we close our eyes…morels!! Glad you enjoyed 😅

Soon we’ll be in the bush for a looong while but we’ll do our best to pre-upload quite a few videos for when we’re gone!

Glad you enjoyed. Next week you will see us harvesting in the rainforest :)

Thanks for watching. Sometimes the greens just don't flush at all in some burns, but when the conditions are right, they can be the most abundant of all species.

Thanks Lyndsey

Thank you for sharing. Wild mushrooms can sometimes be a wild west, fly by night kind of industry in some places. We have always tried to be a more professional and respectful with how we operate but we have definitely know our share of interesting characters who have tried their hands at picking. Morels are very delicious mushrooms, we absolutely love them in just about any meal.

Thanks for the reply...I would love to see you including some of your Morel recipes on the camp fire.

@@SuperMan-yg5dz will do lots more of that this season! Also just recorded a video at home showing how we rehydrate them and cooked them 3 different ways.

Hiya Dixie, thx for taking the time to comment.

Glad you enjoyed it. Best of luck with your foraging in the Midwest! Hope you fill many baskets. Stay safe out there!

Cheers! Glad you enjoyed 🙂

Thanks Eric. It was friendly ground last year. It’s not always so easy, as you know.

@Northern Wild Harvest indeed Did you sell all your dried? They look great, your drying system was working for you I see, looks interesting

Most of last years are sold. Have a few lbs left for personal. It’s a “fit in the back of a pickup” style drying system, works for a small crew. Very cheap to run which is a bonus.

@Northern Wild Harvest looked interesting, forced air and propane heat maybe, maybe you have a wood stove. I have a bit of experience, ahem, drying morels and seeing you load thoes drawers made me cringe, but then your product came out gorgeous. Whatever you doing, if all your dried looked like that, your onto something

Working off 35 years of Randy’s morel drying experience. I know what you mean about the drawers but yep you’ve seen the product - took a bit of experimenting to figure that one out! The drawers can have screens inserted to divide up the volume when the morels are mature and prone to sporing. No propane these days - either woodstove or when using bigger dryers a frostfighter is nice and dry.

Hi Eric, glad you and your son have been enjoying them. We will have a video dedicated to drying morels in the future. Try to not put wet, over mature mushrooms in with the fresher mushrooms. When you start drying, the more airflow the better. Ideally you want dry air that is only slightly warm at first. Too much heat too early will stimulate them to spore. Once the spore tubes are sealed, using slightly warm, dry, high cfm airflow, then you can start adding more heat. Hope this helps! Cheers

Wood is $450 Canadian a cord (4’x4’x8’ stack) if you buy it from firewood guys. We are lucky that we are allowed to gather our own wood here, but there are limits to what we can take. The burnt trees aren’t good firewood until after a few years, once the soot has washed away, by that time it is usually good for burning.

Thank you, 😊 that's very informative 💗💗 #new_subscriber

I'll do my best to answer what I can. 1. We were partially selling fresh that season, buyers often only want 1/4" or less stems commercially when drying morels (various reasons) 2. My boots are nubuck leather, it out performs goretex in many ways, it's what many forest fire fighters use as well as conservation officers (gortex gets destroyed by the burns, I've tried) 3. Field prices in Canada are not accurate to the true value, but in most cases we were talking fresh price,. You can see dried on our shopify store. Fresh prices often reach $60USD per lb fresh in the states. It takes 10lbs fresh to 1lb dried on average in the industry. Buyers here offer a very small fraction of that 4. Happened to not have ladies on our team that season, have many times in the past (no prejedice) 5. Morels are improved by drying, improved flavour and texture and they rehydrate better than any other mushroom. 6. Many morels are used in high end cuisine in france, switzerland etc in a variety of dishes, but they are also great straight up pan fried in garlic and butter 7. With true morels (Morchella spp.) there's no risk of toxins when working with them, they must be cooked before eating and it's probably a good idea to wear a mask when handling large amounts of dried because of spore, which is just fine particulate matter. 8. Handling of fresh morels varies depending on how they are growing, that season they were not brittle. My camera mic is attached to my bucket which makes it sound dramatic. once dried they are very durable. Thanks!

Our drying setup changes around a lot depending on the scale (sometimes we do large commercial drying operations.) There’s a video on our channel showing a similar setup to what we used in this video. It was posted last spring

1/4” or less stem is often the commercial standard on burns, when the mushrooms are being dehydrated.

The field buyers price that season, where we live, went down to $6/lb Canadian at the same time as it was $40/lb in the USA. That’s one of the reasons we dry so many. Also thank you for the nice comment

I’ll have a video coming in the future going into full detail on how i personally do packframe setup. I suggest a tatonka lastenkraxe packframe, or a similar designed model with food grade 5kg plastic baskets with holes, if you can find them. Bungee cords help absorb some of the impact on the baskets/mushrooms during long hikes out. Good luck out there!

@@northernwildharvest Thank you so much! Where do you source your food grade plastic baskets? I have thoroughly enjoyed your documentary. Almost done :)

@@paullewer9406 Thanks Paul, glad you enjoyed it! It's tough to record while out harvesting but I'm slowly getting used to it. The food grade baskets are often quite difficult to get - they are often brought in by the container full which costs a lot. We may have some available in the future if there's a demand.

Generally speaking they don’t flush in anywhere near the volume as the first year following the fire. You can still find some but most of the time it’s a lot more worth it to chase the more recent burns.

After a good harvest we see them when we first close our eyes at the end of the day

Morels are difficult to clean when they are fresh. Our dryers have very high airflow which removes a good amount of any debris but they also get fully washed when rehydrating them.

We mostly harvest on previous year wildfires for morels. They usually start in low elevations and work up to higher elevations as the season goes on. The flush often lines up with the ground temps.

@@northernwildharvest okay. Thanks for the tip. I’m just wondering because my pine patch had a fire last year. I’m curious if it would also have morels.

@@Matsutake_Girl Ah sorry to hear that. It's definitely possible that it could have morels, they often grow with pine trees. Less common with fir and hemlock but I'd take a look around the pine trees where the ground is wet.

​@Matsutake_Girl Most pine mushroom patches are in 75 plus years old trees so that bodes well for morels. If your patch is where I think it is then yes it should produce. We have already found morels mid to north island so timing will be soon. When you see dandelions flowering it's time.... good luck

@@randym8963 omg thank you so much!!! 🩷 I’m going to look this weekend! ☺️

Haha! Yes it happens, sometimes in the most unexpected of places. We have even had people follow our vehicle and footsteps many times because they see how much we bring in. The interactions vary depending on the person you meet. Personally I try to give a good size buffer between myself and other harvesters, which is considered good etiquette but for people who don't follow that or just don't care...well then we just start picking faster! What is the most bothersome is when people harvest morels that are too small, which we have left to grow.

@@northernwildharvest very interesting! Thanks for the response! Having my best yr ever this year in Ohio...around 500 yellows/half frees. Videos must have been good luck for me ;)

@@jaredandcompany Congrats! that's awesome

Yes.