It's the 'shroomers, the mushroomers that make this activity so very special in Curry County. And, we'd like to introduce you to some of these extraordinary people.
Oysters courtesy of Sue Dawson.
Please come back and visit this post again and again. We're in the process of interviewing more Curry County 'shroomers, including a professional and an amateur cultivator.
You told me that there was a ritual that you perform when you first start to mushroom. Describe it to me.
I like to do is to stop for a moment when I enter an area and recognize the spirits who are present and honor them. When I get to a specific area to gather, sometimes I like to call on the 6 directions: east, south, west, north, above and below. I like to recognize the particular direction.
This is my own personal choice. It really doesn’t have a lot to do with American Indians specifically. It has more to do with earth based religions throughout the world which recognize nature and the spirit within nature, confirming that we are all a part of nature. My ceremony recognizes and honors that place and what I am about to gather. I give a thank you and give Native American tobacco. I sprinkle it on the ground. I follow my own instant on where to put it. A lot of times it’s around the bigger or the mother of the group. That type of thing. The larger one. I only gather parts or pieces of an area. I don’t ever deplete an area.
Sometimes when I go for a hike I will perform the tobacco ceremony. Or, maybe at the end of the hike I’ll take the tobacco and sprinkle around the base of a particularly large tree, thanking the spirits for providing this opportunity. It’s just part of a gratitude thing.
Continue reading "MJ's Story: Mushrooming with Spirit, i.e. American Spirit" »
When and how did you get into picking mushrooms commercially?
I’ve been mushrooming probably since 1988. I had a few friends who were doing it. I heard about it and got some ideas from them. I already had some ideas of where to look because I kind of grew up in the woods, hunting and fishing. I went out and tried it.
Chanterelle courtesy of Sue Dawson
Originally I looked for chanterelles and picked them almost exclusively with my mother and brother for a couple of years. At that time the job that I had was seasonal, and work was pretty slow in the fall. I had extra time on my hands to make extra money. I didn’t make a lot of money but it helped.
The price of chanterelles hasn’t changed much since then. In 1988 I think I was selling them for $4.00 - $4.50 pound. They’re still selling chanterelles at that price. In some years it doesn’t even get that good. I did better then. There was less competition, less pickers, and a little better price. It really was better picking in '88 and '89 than it is now.
You often go mushrooming with a camera and a collection basket. Why is that?
I take photographs because I just enjoy taking pictures and sharing with people. As a result of my picture taking, people around me see the things that I see, things that they used to walk right past. They start saying to me: “What’s this? What do you call that? We found one; we found one.” That’s neat, to just share, and that’s what I do with all my photographs: share and educate.
And, mushrooms are neat to photograph. You never know what you are going to see on a mushroom. It can be half eaten. You can look underneath it and maybe there’s something crawling. The colors are so vivid. There are so many different mushrooms!