November 27th, 2023 - My last mushroom obsession for 2023 were the dainty little morsels above. While I spent weeks failing to find them on my walks, going through old photos made me realize I had first stumbled across the "yellowfoot" during my last deer hunt in early November (below). A hard frost did a number on them and I'm glad my ignorance prevented me from trying cook these up just to check them off my list.
That mid-November frost was the last one of 2023 and we were granted an extremely extended mushroom season that will probably go down in the record books. That meant I got a bonus month of that glorious low light shining through the woods and more shrooms for the pot.
My first successful harvest came after I walked about 5 miles looping through a park northeast of Seattle. Most of the habitat was fir or alders with a heavy sword fern cover that didn't yield much for the bag. It wasn't until I found a mossy, open patch of fir trees that I found the winter chanterelles (yellowfoot). It was just a small patch but it also came with a couple bonus golden chanterelles and whatever the two varieties above turn out to be... The winter chanterelles made a great cream sauce and their small size is perfect for dumping into the pan with minimal processing. Sadly for her, the wife was out of town so I was forced to start hijacking the family outings so that we could search for more.
Candy Cap Quest: Along the way I had gathered a few different lactarius species in the hopes that one of them would turn out to be the "Candy Cap". The candy cap has a very strong odor of maple syrup after being dried but none of my attempts have yielded anything but the standard fungal smell (this includes several more failures through January). There are just way too many dark orange capped, lactating shrooms in the woods.
December 27th, 2023 - When we were on the Kitsap Peninsula for the holidays, we took advantage to get into working forests where I heard rumors of yellowfeet lurking. As you can see the terrain off the trails was thoroughly unpleasant but the kids were game and enjoyed using all the thinned trees as scaffolding to climb over the huckleberries. Maybe the whole hike was just an hour but they helped load up the bag to a very satisfying heft. We only stumbled across 2-3 patches but our will ran out before the shrooms did. I would guess each fruiting covered hundreds of square feet with no evidence that the locals (furry or human) had an interest in harvesting them.
Having the extra hands to harvest was great but what really surprised me was both kiddos put in big shifts on the processing side and I have to document it just in case it never happens again.
January 6th, 2024: What turned out to be the last foraging of the mushroom season was a quick ferry ride over to Whidbey Island. I had found a promising forest using iNaturalist but as we drove up to the modest parking lot, there were literally hundreds of people at the small county park. We had unwittingly joined an orienteering race (think a cross country meet where plenty of people are lost). The younger kids had marks trailside but often the adults had to stumble off into the brush.
We got a decent haul of yellowfoot but had to leave more of them behind as we were at the very end of the season and they were looking rather frazzled by the rain and the wind.
I was even pretty sure I had my first batch of candy caps (above) but they turned out to produce the same forest floor smell as every other attempt I tossed in the dehydrator. That means I still have some major edibles to hunt and taste test in 2024 including: queen boletes, fib boletes, hedgehogs, chicken of the woods, hen of the woods, honey mushrooms, blewits, candy caps, and maybe some black trumpets if I can sell the family on roadtrip down the California coast.
To wrap up the day we turned the kids loose on Fort Casey. The 1,000 acre climbing gym might be a little more fun if the wind chill is north of freezing but that motivated our crew to explore deeper into the cellphone illuminated tunnels and storage rooms. Happy exploring to you and yours!
