Where have all the truffles gone? Sadly, we know 2 answers.
We often preserve our truffles in rice.
Where have all the truffles from Curry County gone? There once was a time was truffling was an alternative source of income for Curry County mushroomers, loggers and out of work citizens. It was lucrative, and it was pretty simply. Go into the woods, rake/dig up truffles, sell them, and earn a little extra cash. What's changed? We've been told the timberland holders have closed their areas to those who would truffle. The truffling spots are lost, along with the income that came from them. In a time when so many people are hurting, this is truly sad!
Where have all the truffles gone? Some have gone to thieves, according to OregonLive.com. According to a March 12, 2010 article by Lynne Terry of The Oregonian, "A new breed of thief has sprouted in southern Oregon in recent years, pursuing a culinary delicacy long revered in Europe.
They're truffles thieves. They sneak onto private forestland at night with rakes and scratch up the ground, digging for the musty mushrooms that sell for up to $200 a pound.
They're breaking trespassing laws, undermining Oregon's truffle industry and ravaging reforestation efforts of some private landowners.
"They're illicit commercial types," said Rod Nichols, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Forestry. "They go in and ravage the areas around the trees without any regard for the trees or the soil and haul off as many as they can sell them wholesale."
One of the victims is Roy Marshall, a 79 year old who owns 160 acres in the Siuslaw River watershed near Walton, about halfway between Florence and Eugene.
"The first year I thought it was coyotes," Marshall said. "The second year they came back and started digging in October. When I got there, they had dug the whole area up."
Last winter, he saw a man and a woman fleeing in a Toyota pickup.
This past December, he actually caught two men in the act.
The two gave him phony names and fled in a Chevrolet. Marshall wrote down their license plate number but the Lane County Sheriff's Office has not been able to track them down.
Truffle thieves have since been back, tearing up a 15 acre parcel near Whittaker Creek off Oregon 126.
They did a lot of damage to his 20 year old Douglas firs, cutting into the roots by digging down 18 inches over large areas. They're ruining the reforestation of the plot, Marshall said.
"It will cause root rot and stump rot," he said. "The trees will end up dying. I had to spend days raking the dirt back over the roots."
Truffles are the fruit of mycorrhizal fungi that grow underground in forests from British Columbia to northern California. On the West Coast, they only grow next to the roots of relatively young Douglas fir trees, according to fungi specialist Charles Lefevre.
Four varieties grow in Oregon, he said: brown , black, winter white and spring white.
Lefevre, who owns New World Truffieres, Inc. which grows tree seedings, said Marshall is not the only victim.
"I've heard of a number of other cases," he said. "We've had irate landowners contact us from time to time, asking for help."
"The fact that they're being raked up means they're almost worthless," Lefevre said. "That's why the price of Oregon truffles is so low."
The most expensive Oregon black truffles sell for up to $200 a pound. That compares with $800 a pound for French truffles, he said. Lefevre said the main market is high-end restaurants.
The French, who have long savored truffles, traditionally used female pigs to sniff them down because truffles smell like male pig hormones. But pigs also will eat them, which is why Europeans have switched to truffle-sniffing dogs.
"They find the exact spot," said Daniel Luoma, a fungi expert at Oregon State University. "The person just has to pull the truffle out of the ground without all that random raking for nothing."
There is one problem with using dogs in Oregon. The state only has four truffle-sniffing dogs that he knows of.
But that may change. The North American Truffling Society, which is based in Corvallis, will offer a dog training seminar in the near future.
"We want to redeem the Oregon truffle," Lefevre said.
While dogs would not tear up the forest, Marshall does not want trespassers on his property at all.
"If it isn't stopped," he said, "down the road there will be a problem on everybody's property for years to come with the price of those things."
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