It’s a strange quirk of many forest fires: several months after the flames recede, during mid-April to mid-June morel mushrooms appear.
And with them, the mushroom pickers.
“We have people coming from Austarlia, Austria, Norway, Germany,” says Dale Lufkin, a mushroom buyer in the Prince George area.
It was last May that the Little Bobtail Lake fire erupted south of Prince George, growing to some 25,000 hectares before it was contained.
Now, up to 100 pickers have been in the woods, picking out the delectable mushrooms that have popped out of the burned soil.
“There is a science behind what makes a fire a good productive fire. People who follow them around understand there’s some basic things you have to have,” says Lufkin.
Rich, earthy-tasting morels are prized by chefs worldwide. Suppliers will pay around $6 a pound to the pickers, which means on a good day they can make hundreds of dollars – and the area around Little Bobtail has proved lucrative for both sides.
READ MORE: In 2015, the Northwest Territories’ government promoted morel mushroom picking
“They’ve been finding in this area a lot of…small little bodies of waters in low lying areas. They seem to grow in those areas the best,” said Lufkin.
However, Terrace Shumka, another picker in the area, cautions people to do their research before trying mushroom picking themselves.
“If you have any kind of doubt, do not touch or pick them. There’s a reason why mushroom pickers are only picking one kind and not a whole bunch. There are false morels, and if you cook and eat them, you can get sick,” he said.
– With files from CKPG and The Canadian Press
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