A Czech Obsession

I was amused to see that the Czech Ministry of Agriculture has just announced that in 2008 Czechs collected 2.7 billion crowns worth of wild berries and mushrooms from their forests. And 2008 was a bad year! I have blogged before of the Czech obsession with mushrooming and how I too have caught the fungus collecting bug, but the Ministry's figures certainly bring home the scale of the obsession - this is equivalent to 20,000 tonnes of mushrooms, 9,000 tonnes of blueberries and however many of blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries.

Back home in the UK, where mushroom collecting is a hobby indulged in by a small minority who are regarded as eccentrics with a dangerous hobby by the majority population, some conservationists have expressed fears that a small rise in British mushroom hunters will result in endangering British mushrooms. The Czech experience completely gives the lie to this. Here the forests are crawling with people with a whicker basket in one hand and a mushroom knife in the other and yet I have observed that Czech mushrooms not only spring eternal but also do so in far greater numbers than in the UK. My not very scientific evidence is supported by experiments carried out by scientists which have shown that mushroom numbers actually rise in areas which are harvested. I am therefore determined to continue to do my bit, both in the UK and in the Czech Republic, to help sustain the mushroom population (purely for conservation reasons you understand). Now where did I put my basket?

How to Hunt Mushrooms

I must be due another post about picking mushrooms – why it is the height of the season! Recently I have been pondering what skills/abilities are needed to pick mushrooms. This has been caused by two English friends asking me to show them how to do it, which in turn has got me asking that very question how do I do it. I feel hugely unqualified to teach anyone, but in England I suppose I might pass as experienced.

I know for a fact that I would never have started mushrooming if I simply had learnt from a book or books, no matter how good they were. I needed, and I think most people need, a teacher/mentor who took me through those first few steps in which one gains confidence. That is how it began for me – being shown by my Czech friend – and now it is my turn to pass it on. Of course there are so many mushrooms and there are very different views on what is good eating and what is not (just look at the reference books which often are odds with other). This will mean that your mentor will pass on to you their preferences. This will reflect differences in national attitudes to mushrooms. A list of the top 20 edible mushrooms in Russia included several at the top, which are not only considered inedible in this country but even poisonous. I have noticed that the Czechs prize boletuses above all, and they don't seem to pick tree-growing fungi such as two favourites of mine - chicken in the woods and hen in the woods.

One of the first things my friend taught me was that some of the safest mushrooms to pick are those that look least like the sort of mushroom we buy in Tescos – boletuses and chanterelles for example. In fact some of the most deadly mushrooms look like ordinary mushrooms. Why, only a few days ago I picked some smoky mushrooms which are poisonous and which I had mistaken for ordinary mushrooms (I always check mushrooms against the books when I get them home) . So start with those that you can't mistake for anything else, until your confidence grows. The second rule is learn what the poisonous ones look like. Fortunately there aren't that many that will kill you or even make you seriously ill, there are quite a few which will taste revolting but that is another matter. You'll need to get some books to help you learn what things look like and to check what you have picked – one book is not enough (I have six in England and four in the Czech Republic). My books are regular reading, they are great toilet library material. Using these books I have increased my repertoire slowly and tried each new type carefully, eating only a little at first (they may not be poisonous but they might not work for you).

So there are a few thoughts on the subject. If you decide to take up mushrooming, I hope you enjoy it. I am eternally grateful to my Czech friend for introducing me to one of my great pleasures.

Dryrot

This week I have been managing the work arising from an outbreak of dryrot in the kitchen. Inevitably in an old house, which had not had a great deal done to it for years, we had had some water penetration which had resulted in dryrot in some of the roof timbers. In turn their removal meant that spores from this blasted fungus were spread through out the house – I'm afraid the Czech builders were not overcareful about how they managed the process.

We decided on replacing all the roof timbers and some of the ceiling timbers upstairs as well. We also set about trying to prevent any sort of water penetration – digging a drainage ditch at the back (more of that at some other date) and protective soakaway around the other three walls. A well was installed in the cellar and the house's problems with damp did indeed seem to be solved.

However we did not allow for the inability of our plumber to tighten any pipe properly. Time and again we have had to call him back to a leaking joint. One such leak was unbeknownst to us dripping down the back of the kitchen sink unit and into the wooden unit and floor beneath. A month ago we left the house empty in a period of hot humid weather. The result – you've guessed it – a fine display of fungal bloom. Now as regular readers of this blog will know I am a great lover of mushrooms, but my love is limited to those you can collect and eat. I draw the line at dryrot.

My one consolation is that the kitchen unit, which will have to be burnt, also has a sorry history attached to it. It was created (beautifully I might add) by our errant carpenter, who delivered the unit half finished nearly two years ago and has never come back to finish it. I have been battling in my mind whether to give him up as a bad job (and either get another kitchen or get someone else to finish it) or keep waiting. My decision has now been made for me.

Czechness

I am in England. And it is wonderful here, but I feel the Czech Republic beginning to creep into my thoughts. Perhaps it is because I know I will going back on Tuesday and I am getting ready. But I doubt it. I rather think of Czecho as ringworm. It gets under my skin and keeps spreading, just like the alien in that Doctor Who episode which I watched from behind my parent's sofa. If that sounds unfair (and it is) of all the similes I could use for Czecho I think a fungus is most appropriate.

How does it get under my skin? Well I get the urge to read fairy stories and poetry and I dream about the house. I get the urge to walk in woods, to sniff the air and smell pine resin, leaf loam and that mushroomy smell. And so yesterday I went up into the woods and walked. In the morning I was British enjoying the May sunshine and the sea of bluebells, in late afternoon I returned together with basket. This I filled with St George's mushrooms, which were nearly as abundant as the bluebells and seemed to like the same conditions. Now, in Czecho I doubt I would ever go out in mushroom season (which is after all most of the year) without a basket and mushroom knife. I will be back to get my fix of Czechness very soon.

And Gathering

In my last post I talked about the Czechs as a nation of hunters and in previous posts I have talked about the Czech obsession with gathering mushrooms. In both cases they are very unlike us Brits. For the Czechs hunting is something done by all classes, unlike the British class-ridden approach. Whilst for mushrooming the contrast is even starker - going mushrooming in the Czech Republic is something that starts young, in Britain it doesn't start at all, unless you are unusual. A Czech child will take their little basket and go with their mum or granny into the forest and learn what to pick and what not. My mother, like most Brits, regarded all mushrooms with suspicion unless they were field mushrooms and I was told very clearly never to pick any fungi - they were dangerous. Now unusually I do collect mushrooms. Thanks to the instruction of my Czech friend I now recognise, collect and most importantly eat over 20 types of fungus.

A year ago I had an experience which sums up the differences perfectly. I was in the Forest of Dean collecting mushrooms - being late in the year I was on the look out for the purple Wood Blewits. I was rummaging about in the undergrowth beside a track, when a group passed by close enough for me to hear their conversation. "What is she doing?" "Looking for something, I think." and so on. I carried on and collected a reasonable trawl of purple treasures (blewits are one of my favourite mushrooms).

After a while the group came back, and again the speculation started as to what I was doing - something that would never happen in the Czech Republic as everyone would know what I was up to. For one woman in the group curiousity got the better of her and she broke away from the group and joined me. "What are you looking for?" she asked.

"Mushrooms" I replied, "Would you like to see them." I opened the bag and she looked in. She looked back at me askance. "It's all right," I assured her "They are quite edible."

"Well I hope you know what you are doing, otherwise you won't be around to do it again." She said. I assured her that I did. And she returned to her group and went her way.

When I tell this story to my Czech friends they are amazed that the British should ever be surprised at someone mushrooming, and even more so by the fear of mushrooms that she betrays. Then I tell them about her group - it was made up of a man riding a camel, and three people leading llamas. Of course to a Brit such eccentricity is taken without batting an eyelid, indeed she and her fellows regarded me as the weird one. To my Czech audience this stretches the credulity to breaking point - those Brits are weird.