January 2011
...these are the areas where mushrooms are considered friends, where children gather them for fun before they can read and write, where no adult feels the need for a mushroom manual, where immense quantities of mushrooms are prepared for the table in innumerable ways, and where accidents are unknown.
I have been teaching about wild mushrooms for fifteen years. I have a book and a TV show on the subject in the works. I've also been picking and selling wild mushrooms for that long. I typically harvest and sell several hundred pounds a year at an average price of $16/#. Given that I have fifty restaurants for clients in WNC and beyond, this is quite a small volume. And what I've learned is that, as with many enterprises, commercial or communal, wild mushroom hunting doesn’t really work on a small scale. The supply is just too variable. The fact is that a hundred heads are better at finding mushrooms than one.
What I propose, then, for WNC is a mushroom marketplace. This is what you find all over Europe: clearinghouses where anyone can buy, sell, or trade wild mushrooms. Experts would be on hand to insure safety and quality control. This frees up each picker to hunt mushrooms casually on the side: for fun, exercise, a little spending money, or a tasty dinner. For a brief summary of the concept, see this flyer.
With some public education, I can easily see ten thousand pounds of wild mushrooms a year go through this marketplace, produce that would be used right here in WNC. This would contribute to a local economy that depends less on outside jobs and materials. I’ve seen the price of wild mushrooms shipped in from the Northwest vary far above and below $16/#, but mushrooms are generally rather delicate and perishable. The quality of fresh local mushrooms is consistently far better. Also, WNC has the greatest diversity of mushrooms in the country, including many choice edibles that are simply too uncommon or fragile to be shipped commercially. These include a wide variety of boletes, puffballs, parasols, the beefsteak and cauliflower mushrooms, and many more.
Keep in mind that mushrooms are just the fruit of a fungus, so that gathering wild mushrooms, unlike picking ginseng, is like picking berries. The fungus is still there, in the ground or tree, ready to put out more. This makes wild mushroom hunting a potentially sustainable, earth-friendly industry, as it is in the Pacific Northwest. A search on “non timber forest products” (NTFP) pulls up many studies on the economic potential of wild mushrooms. Since many of the top wild mushrooms -- including chanterelles, boletes (porcini-type mushrooms), and lobster mushrooms -- only grow wild (i.e., they cannot be cultivated) and only in the woods, a forest-based industry argues for conservation and the air quality that these ecosystems need. It would be a motivation to keep our forests uncut while creating more lasting employment at the same time.
In Europe, most everyone knows how to hunt for wild mushrooms, and you frequently see people selling them by the side of road. My friend recently got back from Romania where she saw a man selling a variety of wild mushrooms in this way. She stopped to pick eat berries from a nearby bush. His jaw dropped. He said, "you can EAT those?" "Yes," she replied. "REALLY?"
They were blueberries.
Back in WNC, the only wild mushroom most people are familiar with is morels. But that can easily change. There are over 3,000 different species of mushrooms in our area. But people don't have to know more than a few. In fact, they only need to know six. These six varieties constitute eighty-five percent of the edible wild mushrooms in WNC. In other words, at least 85% of the mushrooms I sell are these six varieties. And they are: lobster mushrooms, chicken of the woods, hen of the woods (maiitake), chanterelles, leatherbacks (Lactarius corrugis/volemus) and honey mushrooms. At least the first three are easy to recognize.
They’re also quite easy to find. Chicken and hen of the woods commonly fruit right in people's yards and weigh 5-50 pounds each. Last Spring I spent a month helping some homeschoolers put on The Wizard of Oz. The day after the play was my birthday, but I was wondering how I would pay the rent. Two blocks from my house, in someone's yard, I spotted this chicken of the woods. I sold it for $750.
Oyster mushrooms are also found in that quantity anywhere that tulip poplars have been cut down. Reishi, one of the top mdicinal mushrooms in the world, grows here in quantity on dead and dying hemlock, and given the hemlock blight, could be another big income stream.
At high volume, the marketplace could sell wild mushrooms for as little as $10/pound and pay half that to the picker. At $5 a pound, a person in very little time could easily make $25 or more on a casual walk in the woods or even in their neighborhood. In other words, they'd be making at least $15/hr for getting some exercise and fresh air. Wouldn't you rather be flipping burgers?
Granted, this would only work for people on the side. It's seasonal, and even then, not reliable enough to be a full-time job.
The fact that many mushrooms are not only found in the woods but also in urban settings means that contamination is a concern. Mushrooms are known to soak up heavy metals and other toxins. This would be part of the public education program along with proper collection and storage methods. But again, identification would not a concern because all mushrooms would be inspected and verified by experts.
In France, to promote public safety, every pharmacist is trained in basic mushroom identification, so there is always someone nearby to show your mushrooms to. Finding experts here would not be difficult. Asheville has a local mycological society with over 100 members. And of the top six varieties, several have no dangerous look-alikes anyway.
The main mushroom season (with the exception of morels, which fruit in late April) runs from June through October. For the winter months, mushrooms are easily dried or frozen, and the supply can be supplemented by cultivated varieties year-round. The market could also feature local wild and feral plant foods like wild persimmon, nettle, and chestnuts. Fruits, seeds, nuts, roots, and greens are all available over a wider season than mushrooms (see my list of the top 75 wild and feral foods in WNC).
There is a lot of initiative in North Carolina for growing gourmet mushrooms. In 2001 it was estimated that in ten years, the industry could be generating as much as $80 million per year (see "Edible and Medicinal Mushroom Farming in North Carolina: A Cash Crop for the Future"). In 2008 I was contacted by The Compass Group in Charlotte, one of the largestfood service companies in the world, asking about setting up a standing order for as much wild mushrooms as I could give them.
In the past six months, foraging has become the cutting edge of the local foods movement. Noma in Copenhagen was recently voted the best restaurant in the world, and much of its menu is foraged. As Time reported in July, foraging is "the latest culinary obsession." After all, "local food" really means native food, and native means wild. A couple weeks later the AP ran the story, "Foodies turn to foraging to connect with nature."
I could see a number of local nonprofits willing to support this effort, including ASAP (The Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project), The NC Natural Products Association, Asheville Green Opportunities, and a number of environmental groups. Local 4H groups could also get involved, for children are natural mushrooms hunters.
Initially, the market could be located at a tailgate farmer’s market, but ideally it would be a place that’s open daily with refrigeration on hand, and Green Hill Urban Farm in West Asheville has offered to provide this. Ultimately, the market would be more central. Asheville Local Foods online could be an outlet for it. Foothills Connect may also be interested.
I see my role in all this as the public educator. Contact me if you’d like to discuss this idea further.
