I'm back
So at last the morels are beginning to make their appearance. Yahoo groups postings
indicate that the most savvy and knowledge mushrooms hunters are having some success
at finding blacks and half-free morels. Yellows and their kin appear to be on the
way just poking their noses above the ground. Those signs that we look for are becoming
more apparent every day. The weather has been so very different this whole year,
seeming like a puzzle with interchangeable parts. Flowers were blooming in January
and snow was falling in April. My harbingers of morels appearance are the harvest
of asparagus in my garden, blossoms on my apple trees and the appearance of spring
foliage (violets, trillium, may apples, etc.) in the woods. I harvested my first
batch of asparagus yesterday morning and the second batch this evening.
I've yet to find my first morel of this season. Last Sunday I did some exploring
and there were some surprises and some disappointments. I was very surprised to
find the trillium, ramps, may flowers and violets making an appearance in the woods.
I picked a few of the ramps but they were still a bit on the small side. They still
did a dandy job of flavoring the pork chops that my wife made the other day.
I was very disappointed to find one of my mushrooming areas cut with logging roads
and the trees knocked down and on their way to the sawmill. This area did not produce
many edible mushrooms for me, but one summer it was filled too many destroying angels
to count, all were fruiting at the same time. It looked enchanted but deadly. Logging
tracks are always followed by ATVs and they really tear up the forest floor. Trash
and bottles are sure to follow.
I found some of the young small elm trees showing their first leaves. The larger
trees were still dormant. The tulip poplars and ash trees where also dormant, as
were the morels that I expected to find beneath them.
The continued warm up should produce some morels by the weekend. That is when I
plan to go exploring again. Depending on the weather, that will either be at Mingo
for Morel Madness or in some of my other morel hunting grounds.
We have never had much luck in finding either black morels or half-free morels.
Last year we found our first half-free morels beneath some apple trees. When I checked
there Sunday there was no sign of anything.
The arrival of more seasonable weather has finally permitted me to work in the garden,
tilling and sowing my spring vegetable seeds. Summer vegetables are growing, slowly,
on racks under florescent light in my garage. It felt good to get my hands into
the earth again.
With a bit of work I managed to thin down the edge on my favorite mushrooming knife
and put a razor edge on it. When you start poking around in the ground the edge
takes a beating but with the steel or ceramic sharpening stick I can get it back
into shape in under a minute. Now I need to devote some time to my pocketknife.
It's so hard to figure what kind of a year this will be. Some things have appeared
on time but got frosted. Others delayed their appearance and are now playing catch
up. Still others are right on time. We may find our morels bumping into each other
in some woodland traffic jam. I am curious to see the size of the harvest at Mingo
tomorrow and Sunday. By Sunday or Monday Yahoo Groups should have a fair number
of "success" postings.
by Joe
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