Yep for sure! Finding that other road gave us access to a lot more ground without having to hike as far too.

It's hard work but we love doing it! We often operate a buying station, or a large drying setup where we receive mushrooms from multiple buyers. Randy is one of the few people in the world who has dried well over a million lbs of morels 😁. When we're not running a buying/drying station we tend to go to the really remote places, but even then there can still be competition. On this fire we we're lucky enough to have no competition while there was over 100 pickers on the other side of the burn in a less productive area (the road into our patch was brutal, it was basically a bulldozer trail.) We generally only harvest the year following a burn, morels can produce for multiple years but very rarely in the same volumes as the year following the fire. We remove the stems for a number of reasons. Firstly it is a requirement to have 1/4" or less stem to sell to buyers here. Most of the dirt/ash contamination is on the stem, insect contamination often starts in the stems first, they package better with short stems and you can fit more on the drying racks (space is valuable,) and the BC and Yukon government also requests that you limit removing soil from an area when harvesting burn morels. Not to mention, pulling them out of the ground can reduce the yield of the next flush by removing babies that would have growth from the same stem base (i have footage of this.) Hope this helps! :)

@@northernwildharvest thanks for the info! Appreciate you taking the time to comment! I live in Ontario and teach foraging tours here on edible and medicinal plants and mushrooms. Always wanted to go out west and forage. I think I'm going to jasper for a week around June 1st. Hoping there might be a few Morels there during that time after i hunt here in Southern Ontario. Never been there. Anyways, all the best this season! Heard we're supposed to have above average precipitation throughout most of Canada.

@@joet81 No problem. I remember you mentioning that before. Sounds like nice work teaching foraging in Southern Ontario! We might be out in Northern Ont. soon for some harvesting. June 1st is perfect timing in BC if you're going to do some picking. Our email is northernwildharvest@gmail.com if you ever need to reach out about fire harvesting etc. Good luck to you this season also!

@@northernwildharvest thanks! Wish I could come to bc! Only going as far as jasper. Hopefully one day. Best of luck

Remote parts of Canada. Usually wilderness areas.

Check your mail, I just shipped you ten pounds!