A Great Start for 2014

The rain has been in a consistent weekly pattern lately and the golden chanterelles they are a bloomin'. Found this interesting one today with three stems fused together. Normally I always cut the mushroom at its base to preserve the mycelium (think of mycelium as mushroom roots) but I made an exception for this one.

One big benefit of the weekly rain, dry, rain pattern is that the stems are mostly solid and firm. Last year's heavy rain would often over saturate the chanties and make the center part spongy and porous.

The Lazy Man's Guide to Chanterelle Hunting - A friend and I had an interesting outing last week. We drove out to a nearby state forest and foraged from the comfort of my car. As I drove slowly down the dirt roads he looked one way I looked the other and we kept our eyes pealed for the telltale bright orange color of chanterelle caps. In this way we covered a lot of ground and found 4 or 5 patches.

Its worth noting that we always found the patches from 10 to 40 feet from the road. Further exploration into the forest yielded next to nothing. I've found this to be generally true with Chanterelles, they often can be found next to trails and roads. I have no idea why.

More rain is expected tomorrow. Excellent...