Chicken of the Woods

Every summer, I cajole someone on the farm into seeking out one of my favorite wild foods to find with me: wild mushrooms.

Usually, their abundance coincides with the most intensely busy times of the year: morels come when the first farmer’s markets have started and the greenhouse is full of plants that need tending to. Chanterelles come at the height of summer, when all we think of is getting hay in the barn. And my favorite, Chicken of the Woods, falls in between, with nary a specified date in site, dependant on rain and heat to grow into colossally huge arrays of orange, succulent fungi. And usually, everything at the farm is in disarray and in need of weeding or planting.

Mushroom foraging is a luxury, one right up there with having the bed made and the lawn mowed. It’s an extravagance, because, honestly, whoever heard of surviving the winter or even gauging one’s readiness for the bare season to follow summer’s bounty by the amount of mushrooms lardered away. There are several pounds of beans to pick, beets and carrots and Swiss chard to bunch, sheep to move to new pasture before even the smallest of shrooms gets considered.

Today, I have been enticed away from the farm by my sister’s boastings of a mushroom field that even I will not scoff at. She says that she’s harvested three pounds of mushrooms and not even dented its surface.

As a family, we tend to exaggerate, so I am not prone to believe her. We walk through the woods where I used to wander as a fourteen year-old, a place safe enough that our parents would not think to try and find us until dusk set in. Now, there are new houses where horse trails were, but still, it’s not as bad as I expected (I’ve actually refused to walk in these woods for the past 11 years, in fear of what I would find. My sister has finally told me that most of it is still there, the tree shaped like the number four, the sliding hill, the moss rock..). One of the houses is beautifully done. It looks like an old New England saltbox, complete with grey stain, a roof that resembles cedar shakes, and a horse barn finished with old-fashioned windows.

We walk by these places, and I remember what they looked like, void of houses, when I rode on my horse by them many years ago, maybe 20 years ago, maybe 30. It’s fun to be walking with my sister, back down the same roads we did as kids.

The sky is breaking clear blue, and I think about how different the weather is, right now, at this moment, just 50 miles away. I think about the girls, diligently weeding the garden, trying to stay on top of it, doing such a great job despite the deluge. And then we get to the Chanterelles.

There is no way that I can describe what this looks like. There are orange carpets of mushrooms as far as we can see. Everywhere. We start picking. And we’re choosey, careful not to take the old ones who’ve sent their spores, or the very young ones who’ll continue the produce. There are other mushrooms. Frilly corral mushrooms, little ones with bright green caps, burnt orange, sun-yellow, velvet brown. It’s like we’re in a terrarium.

Back home, after absconding with 11 ½ pounds of mushrooms, we are greeted with the news that we have the tomato blight- the one that has been spread by big box stores selling to home gardeners who have the desire to grow their own food, and who have unknowingly purchased and spread the disease- the one spread by a fungus called Phytopthera infestans. What a rough justice that I have spent the bits of time harvesting fungi, when a fungus has destroyed our tomatoes…

We pull up and burn 300 of the 600 plants, hoping that the remaining ones don’t die. Shannon drops the F bomb (sorry Daddy Duffield, but she did), and we all just look, having only ever heard a grunt of discontent from her in the past. She planted the seeds, transplanted the plants in their pots, planted them in the ground after making the holes in the biodegradable plastic and mulching the rows with hay. Staked them, tied them, watched them grow fruits. And today, she ripped them out of the ground and burned them. Guess it’s worth the word.

Tali quotes Godfather lines, trying to keep it light. We all work like mad, to get rid of the spores, to stop it, to protect what’s left. All that we have read points to total failure, but right now, we’re up to accepting this horror, not that one.

At supper, we feast on the Chanterelles, that would not be so plentiful, if not for the rain. We don’t talk about the pitfalls. We just rejoice in what we’ve found in this wet, cool summer- like Chicken of the Woods.