ForageCast: After the Flood

Yellow feet, or winter chanterelles, are one of the most delicious mushrooms still fruiting in abundance in the northeast.

After one of the Northeast’s wettest falls of the century, my foraging eyes are on like never before. I am having an extremely difficult time prying my gaze from the ground, which has proven dizzying at times but more lucrative than expected. In the last two weeks my foraging eyes have inadvertently spotted bundles of cash on two separate occasions – first $20 and then $13. Money may not grow on trees, but it sure does seem to nestle up among the fungi from time to time!

Though the wet weather pattern continues in Ithaca, the colder evening temperatures are causing all but the hardiest fungi to disappear from our fields and forests. Don’t be mistaken – there are still massive bounties to be found, but you have to dig a little deeper and settle for a smaller selection of species. Honey mushrooms and aborted entolomas are as abundant as ever, and there are still plenty of hens roosting at the base of oak trees and porcini, blewits, and yellow foot chanterelles hiding among the freshly fallen leaves. But gone is September’s explosion of mushrooms of every shape, size, and color, when I was returning from forays with twelve different species of gourmet mushrooms all found in the same small patch of woods.

The ForageCast still shows sixteen delicious and distinctive species that are fruiting in the northeast, but many of these are dwindling fast. Now is the time to get out and find the season’s last black trumpets and chicken of the woods, to check back on your favorite maitake tree and get one last harvest to preserve for the winter. You will be thankful in January when you have dried porcini and black trumpets in your pantry, and maitake duxelles in your freezer!

ForageCast for the next two weeks!