Polk County?

Early-season Greys popped after last weekend's rain. This weeks cold weather slowed everything. Finding small amounts here there now in the sunny high elevation microclimates. Soil time was 57 now it's dropped to 48 this rain and a couple of warm days and it should be on real nice. Get all your chores done today and tomorrow and then it's game on

 

I finally found a few small yellows yesterday along the river. I thought this would be a perfect year. The weeds are growing but not the morels.

 

Found about a dozen yesterday in Des Moines but they were hiding pretty good.

 

I give up. This is the worst year I've ever had. Who is selling fresh morels?

 

I found 4 morels today in Polk Co. after looking for several days now.

I also found 2 nice dryad saddles on some dead tree trunks. They'll be going on our home-made pizza today. I just sauteed them with butter, salt and parsley. Delicious.

 

YAY! Dryad's saddle ROCKS. Give basil a try; and the smaller they are, the better.

Ummm, the basket.
8-O

I've never hunted with a basket. Such trapping suggests an elite and aristocratic class of mushrooming "royalty." And I always expect to find many more than said basket might hold. What would you do if providence shone upon you and you found yourself amid a mother lode of <em>morchella esculenta</em>? I can't imagine strolling leisurely through the open woods in the mere hope that, by chance, some fungal morsel might be readily procured to satiate the season's fleeting impulse for a taste, nothing more, of spring. What is mushroom hunting in that manner like?

Forgive me for this unseemly inquiry, but this proletarian has just extricated himself from the ravages of a veritable jungle of multiflora rose. My arms are shredded from having gone to hell and back over 6 hours for 7 pounds--but it was absolutely thrilling!

Would something like this make a good puzzle?

 

I found 12 more morels today.

I also found some Mica inky Caps, which I ate already.

Get off my basket. And besides, I'll never find enough morels to fill it up anyways.

 

My grandpa used to use wicker baskets and paper grocery bags. I think it's styling. When you fill it just go back for more!

 

Finding about a pound or two a day. Am getting older and only hunt around two hours at a time. This is my 57th year of hunting, I'd give this season a 5 out 10, not great not horrible. But as we diehards always say "wait till next year". Alway waiting for that perfect season. Still spoiled by the finds in the 60's and 70's.

 

I found 6 more today in some very dense and steep terrain. I'm gonna try and dry them this time and see how they turn out.

Only 2 hours at a time? Heck, my attention is drained after 2 hours.

Also, shoot me a message if you're willing to hand over some spots to a strapping young man who seeks to eat as many morels as humanly possible before he dies.

 

Nice job Bettendorf and fungusfinder. I'm drying 150 or so at the moment B, open air, laid out on a table and with a fan. This has worked well. My attention was drained after about 6 hours today. I sense the season ending within the coming week. Despite much needed rain, 80 degree temps are the death knell for morels. The rapid growth of ground cover will further usher in the end times. The morel apocalypse is upon us.

I also remember the extraordinary outings of the late 60s after the Dutch elm disease ravaged the woods and left countless hundred-year old elms dead in its wake. I recall a gentle draw between two knolls, just off the gravel road, not far from where I grew up in Jones County. 3 or 4 massive elms, each with bark peeling and white branches twisting to the sky on the south-facing side of the draw. The draw was literally filled with huge yellows, everywhere. We would fill bags upon bags for day after day...they just kept coming!

 

I got 5 more morels today and a couple more Dryad’s saddles which are cooking up now.

 

Must have been in the late 60's, found 6 to 7 hundred 4 to 6 inch yellows in clumps of 25 to 50 per ciump growing in a stand of 6 dead elms. Had to make several trips back to my pickup to bring the harvest in. Wish we had cell phones then so I coulld get a picture of them, never seen anything like it sense. Huge haul of fungi in a 40 by 50 foot area. Yes 80 degrees is a death blow.

 

fungus, I remember those days. Or was it a dream? Man elm can be hard to find now.

 

Goodbye blue sky goodbye!!! You only have 360 left till next year

 

So would it be safe to say that we have just started the season here?

 

Iowa County today. Several nearing the end. Very tough terrain, hard going, not conducive to basket hunting.

 

Buckthornman, what a moniker! Every time I twist and turn through blackberry brambles and multiflora rose, or find myself waist-high in nettles in bottomlands ogling a distant upland tract of brittle elms, I'll smile and thank god I'm not entangled in buckthorn! Shredded and beaten, I feel like this season has taken more than a few years off my life. I've succeeded in gathering 20 pounds or so, although it has come at significant cost. I haven't the energy to move north to MN or WI in this seasonal quest, and so I'm entering the reflective phase of my season. I will soon begin the 340-day countdown.

Go forth and prosper.