A Walk in the Woods with Helena

On Saturday I met my friend Helena in Cesky Krumlov and walked with her over Dubik hill along the old pilgrim's way through the forest to Kajov. It was a slow affair, as we stopped to admire nature and the scenery, and of course to look for mushrooms. I had thought that there would be lots of people with mushroom baskets, but no the woods were empty apart from a child with her mother and they had no basket.

Helena explained that September had been a fabulous month for mushrooms. The summer here has been very dry, indeed there had been a drought, so it wasn't until the rains came in September that the woods exploded with mushrooms. You apparently couldn't move for fungi. Last week there had been frosts – earlier than usual – and they had put paid to many mushrooms. We found the blackened remains throughout the forest.

“I know my Zoe will find mushrooms,” said Helena with an optimism I did not share.

The first edible mushrooms I came across were amethyst deceivers. Not great mushrooms but better than nothing, they went into the basket. I remember my friend Hannah showing me them, when first I learned to identify edible mushrooms. Without her guidance I would never had got up the courage to forage. My son and his girlfriend are going on a day's workshop about hunting mushrooms. I am delighted they have taken an interest, but a side of me wonders how much one can learn in a day. The only way to learn is to go repeatedly into the woods at different times of year with someone who knows what they are doing.

Up a path that branched off the main track through a plantation of fir trees we came across yellow-legged autumn chanterelles, hedgehog mushrooms and the normal chanterelles. All favourites of mine. Now as we walked along the track nearing Kajov we picked more chanterelles, and even some boletus which had been sheltered from the frosts by mosses. The basket wasn't full when we got to Kajov, but there certainly were enough mushrooms for at least two meals, plus some put down in the freezer.

The Early Bird Catches the Mushroom

I was up and out of the house at 6am this morning. This was partly because the weather is so hot that to attempt anything physical after 10 is foolhardy and I wanted a walk in the woods. Of course this was not just any walk but a mushroom-gathering one, and in order to get the best one has to be up early. Already there were two women in the wood rummaging under fallen pine branches. On the road on the other side of the hill several cars were parked, including this one which had illegally been driven up the track to gain a few yards on its owners' mushrooming rivals.

Well I was lucky and got a good basketful. This year is a spectacular one for chanterelles. They are huge (four inches high) but the moss in which they nestle is likewise tall, so it is very easy to miss them. In addition I got some sheep's polypore, hedgehog mushrooms and russulas. So that's my supper sorted for a couple of days.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I share in the Czech obsession of mushrooming and how in England I am often met with disbelief when I assure people I meet in the forest that you can eat what I have collected. I would like to think that my eccentricity on this is seen as normal in the Czech Republic. But this is not always the case. Czechs are taught what to collect by their parents and grandparents, they inherit a repertoire of mushrooms that they collect and often this is not large. I was taught mushrooming by a Czech with a large repertoire and I have additionally made a great study of mushroom books (so much so at least two are to be found next to the loo in both my Czech and British homes).

Today a fellow mushroomer (a Czech) stopped me in the woods, and she busily told me that the charcoal burner (a russula much prized in Britain) was not edible and wrongly identified the sheep's polypore as a field mushroom. Tut, tut, tut, she went as I showed her I was confident enough to nibble some, and away she went shaking her head. Another Czech friend with whom I occasionally go mushrooming was shocked that I collect blewits (great favourites of mine and ones which are now commercially cultivated) or fungi that grow on trees. She will however collect the blusher – which you will find often listed as poisonous in English books, but which is very popular in the Czech Republic.

So there you go, I can't win. By the way I have eaten blusher – it's okay but not worth the fuss the Czechs make over it, especially as you go through a polaver to cook it.

PS. In response to Karen's comment - here is a photo of my basket of mushrooms. The egg yellow ones are chanterelles, the charcoal coloured one is (you guessed it) charcoal burner, the white ones with the beige tops are sheeps polypore, and the large brown one is a boletus.

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.

Thumbsticks

When I last went mushrooming with one of my Czech friends, she was much taken by my home-made thumbstick.

To any of reader that does not know what a thumbstick is, let me explain. A thumbstick is a walking stick, which has a forked end where one places one's thumb. I first learnt to make thumbsticks when I was a member of the Cotswold Wardens. It was a useful by-product of the Wardens work on laying hedges. Hedge-laying requires the cutting back of trees and shrubs and this generated the raw material for the thumbsticks. The best tree for a thumbstick is hazel, which produces suitably long, strong and straight tree stems which then fork. You simply cut the stick to the length required - the owner should be able to stand comfortably with their thumb in the fork and arm bent ie the fork is about an inch higher than the shoulder.

I do not know if the thumbstick is particularly Cotswold or English but my Czech friend was much taken with it and said she couldn't get one here. I therefore decided to make one for her – there are plenty of hazel trees around the village, so off I went with pruning saw in hand. A length of wood was cut and I set about smoothing it down for her. An hour later and the stick was ready. I met her in a gallery where she works and handed over my handiwork. My stick was hardly a work of art, the stick was not entirely straight, but then as I said to her if she lost it (as I am forever doing when I am mushrooming) I can easily make another. At this point we were joined by a friend of hers. We explained the advantages of the stick to him – with your thumb in the fork your hand can not slip, the fork is useful for holding up electric fence wires and low hanging branches, the stick could beat off an attacker and most importantly for a Czech the fork allows you to turn over and sometimes pick mushrooms without bending down. Her friend listened and came up with another use – the fork could be used to tackle snakes.