It was a short conversation. As I was was walking to the garden, I waved to our neighbor. He asked if I had any luck finding morel mushrooms this year. I indicated I had not found any, despite several days of walking our woods. Surprisingly, he said his family had found about 60 morels so far this season!
Information like that makes one question everything you have been doing. Am I looking in the right places? Is our land terrible for morels? Do I need glasses? Although I was busy trying to wrap up our kitchen remodel, I decided to spend one more day in the woods foraging for morels.
The bulk of our woodland is a roughly 40-acre block, but we also have an addition 10 acres on the opposite side of our pasture. To be honest, I had never been in that smaller block of woods. I am not sure why - Maggie has walked through there many times, including a trip that ended with bushwhacking her way out through the overgrowth in one area. The best way to get to this woods is through a small pasture, but until recently it had been very overgrown. Our farmer neighbor cleared this pasture this spring for his cattle, so now it is much easier to navigate. After finding out about our neighbor's morel finds, I decided it was time to visit this woods.
In a normal year, with plenty of spring rain, I probably would have found plenty of morels in this small woods. I found many small Elm trees, and the walking was easy due to the cattle paths. Sadly, I had no luck, but at least can now say I have walked on nearly all of our property, on and off-trail, after a year of ownership.
That evening, I made a last visit to our back woods to look for morels. I traveled an off-path upland area that I have walked only a few times. I again saw many small Elm trees, but no morels. I returned to the trail, following it to a small ravine where we found a few morels last year, past their prime. Nothing. I was about to continue my walk, but noticed a dead tree off the trail, further downhill along the ravine. Here, in what is probably the wettest and lowest point on our property, I found two morels. One was standing proudly above the surrounding Virginia Creeper. The second was trying to grow under a downed branch and was curled over. I admired them for a while, took a blurry photo, pulled out my pocketknife, and harvested them. That night. Maggie fried them up with some onions she had cut for our dinner.
It was not the best of years for morels. The bounty of the land ebbs and flows. But I can at least now say that I found some morels this season. I was also able to finally visit areas of our land I had never seen before. We are starting to enter oyster mushroom season. Maybe I need to take one last trip through the woods.
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