Foraging Morel Mushrooms from a Remote Wildfire in Canada!

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-06

[00:01:26]Okay, we're going to pick some mushrooms bringing one pack board, two buckets with extenders and this time four baskets on the front of the quad. If you watched the last episode, that was a pretty long quad ride back and I have to stay standing with the pack board on to try to protect the mushrooms and it's the only way to fit that many with two people on the quad. With that weight with the pack board on, the blood can't get to my feet so they go numb after about 20 minutes.

[00:01:51]So every every 20 minutes or so I have to hop off the quad and do a little dance get the blood flow back to my feet.

[00:01:58]But we managed to do it and we're going to try to do it again.

[00:02:01]This quad road is insanely long. We're going to time it going in and then if we remember we'll time it going out. 52 minutes straight 4 by 4 in to get in here. So what we're going to do is take the pack board. We've got seven baskets worth on there.

[00:02:18]The first spot of the day we know is going to be exceptionally good. So just got to pack in there but we don't know how far that'll go.

[00:02:25]I scouted about 150 m or so last night and it looked really good. Past that is unknown.

[00:02:33]I'm going to find a little spot down by that line of trees.

[00:02:36]All these mushrooms right here I'll pick.

[00:02:41]Okay, we've got our pack board spot.

[00:02:44]It's like an anchor for the start of our day.

[00:02:47]And we're going to go along picking these perfect morels.

[00:03:23]I just wait along this tree. Sure.

[00:03:54]Mhm.

[00:05:03]>> Okay, just heading back to the pack.

[00:05:05]Didn't move far at all. And my bucket's full.

[00:05:08]And the mushrooms in here are really nice. They all have nice white stems.

[00:05:12]Or at least about 85 to 90% are going to be good quality.

[00:05:17]Leaving hundreds around the area.

[00:05:21]Wherever we walk through these blackened sections, there's blown out mushrooms, so they're being left behind.

[00:05:26]So, there's way more spore than this area could ever need.

[00:05:30]One mushroom is enough for 3 million spores, and we're leaving thousands of mushrooms.

[00:05:36]Yeah.

[00:06:36]>> So, almost four baskets with what Ben has, and the quality is really good.

[00:06:43]Look at those beauties.

[00:06:45]Wow.

[00:06:47]I'm going to put some lids over top of these just to keep the sun off of them.

[00:06:53]So, they'll all start spoiling out.

[00:07:17]On my way back to the pack board, got another bucket and a quarter.

[00:07:23]Ben's got almost a full bucket.

[00:07:26]So, we're doing pretty good here. I think we might have finished off everything I scouted last night.

[00:07:31]That line Uh actually, there might be another half bucket to a bucket left, but pretty great harvest.

[00:07:39]This ground is so easy. The ground is soft, so when you kneel down it's easy.

[00:07:43]There's no bugs today, amazingly, and it's nice and shady.

[00:08:03]So, we got that will be at least six, maybe up to seven baskets in about 150 m, and it's only about 30 m wide.

[00:08:14]So, that's really good, especially considering a lot of these mushrooms were like that medium size.

[00:08:19]Right? So, you can let them get bigger like that, and then it would have been almost twice as much volume, but the quality would go way down. So, I would prefer to get them when they're at that perfect medium size, and then they're all a lot of them will be A-grade.

[00:08:35]Uh better eating, better texture, less issues with mold and everything else.

[00:08:40]And on top of that, we've left so many mushrooms in the bush uh that were too old already.

[00:08:46]Sitting here enjoying my lunch, and this weird-looking guy just landed on me.

[00:08:56]There he goes.

[00:09:00]Okay.

[00:09:01]Our spot has ended, and now we're back to scouting.

[00:09:06]The whole area surrounding where we picked those six baskets has almost nothing.

[00:09:13]It was just all concentrated in that line.

[00:09:16]And now we've walked five times that distance and picked 1/20th the amount. Okay, we got six on the pack and one full bucket, and we ran out of ground, so we're going to hike these back to the quad. It's about 750 m, and then do some exploring around, cuz there's a few other areas we might pick on the way out. Even if we don't find any more, that's still not a bad day.

[00:09:41]Yes, sir.

[00:09:42]Head on.

[00:10:13]That was a solid walk. It's actually quite warm out today, warmer than it said it was supposed to be.

[00:10:18]So, I'm going to put the one bucket into the basket on the quad, and we're going to try checking a couple spots on the way out. And so, most of these mushrooms, these seven baskets we have here, plus about four and a half of the maybe even five baskets we got last night, was in a 200-m long strip. Pretty good, but it's just one area like that.

[00:10:39]So, we got to find those little needle in the haystack areas, and then once we find them, it's good mushrooms.

[00:10:47]Here's what the quad road looks like.

[00:10:50]And again, it's probably about an hour and 20 minutes with the mushrooms to get back, hour and 15.

[00:10:57]It was 52 coming in. And this spot's not too bad. It's the areas where I have to dodge trees and chainsawed trees and hanging trees.

[00:11:05]So, there's quite a bit of maneuvering.

[00:11:06]That's why I can't It's really hard to film it while I'm driving and carrying that thing.

[00:11:12]So, I'm just going to leave this here because Ben went scouting while I put that basket on, and he hit a little spot just over the hill here.

[00:11:22]See what we find.

[00:11:25]Not all of it's like this, but there's a good section that is.

[00:11:30]So, you got to go real slow with the mushrooms on, so you don't damage them.

[00:11:39]Beautiful wetland area.

[00:11:42]I'm going to check down this edge here.

[00:13:07]Well, we made it back.

[00:13:09]Almost got eight baskets, seven and three quarters. And Robbie picked almost three around here, so that's amazing.

[00:13:17]And then I haven't seen Randy yet, but looks like the guys were busy around camp.

[00:13:23]So, all in all, pretty productive day so far.

[00:13:27]And now time get out of these boots because that hurt my feet. Just brutal.

[00:13:32]Get our daily weigh-in. This is for me and Ben.

[00:13:36]And then I'll check Robbie's afterwards.

[00:13:39]77.2 lbs today. We were hoping for a little more, but I will say the quality was better.

[00:13:46]So that that's good. And there were definitely some nice mushrooms in there.

[00:13:51]Really nice mushrooms.

[00:13:56]And a good example here.

[00:13:59]So there is a baby Morchella tomentosa.

[00:14:03]And as it gets older, turns into that.

[00:14:06]But look at that mushroom.

[00:14:11]The dark stem on there. It's tight.

[00:14:22]Robbie got 29.45 lbs today. And some of them a lot of them were nice greens.

[00:14:28]They're on the blow racks here.

[00:14:30]And they're looking good. Yeah, so pretty good. Over 100 lbs combined today and really nice quality.

[00:14:36]Luke has once again shown us how it's done and made an incredible dinner with some rice.

[00:14:47]Hot food.

[00:14:48]Looks amazing, Luke.

[00:14:49]>> Careful. The pots are very hot.

[00:14:52]There are these little flying devils trying to get in and bite us.

[00:14:57]Mosquitoes.

[00:15:00]Just check the solar power and we're good.

[00:15:03]Solar powered mushroom dryer is doing its thing.

[00:15:06]How cool is that?

[00:15:09]And the boiler's running. I can have a hot shower.

[00:15:14]Been in here for 2 and 1/2 hours, maybe.

[00:15:19]All those are looking beautiful.

[00:15:23]Wow.

[00:15:24]Wow, they're drying really nice.

[00:15:29]Last night the bat tried to get me as I went to my cabin.

[00:15:32]Where are you, devil bird?

[00:15:38]See you in the morning.

[00:16:28]Good morning, everybody.

[00:16:30]Robbie and Luke and I are heading out to pick some mushrooms.

[00:16:35]Fairly laid back harvest. We're going to try to find some green fire morels and it's Luke's last day picking here on this fire.

[00:16:41]Going to take Robbie's Tacoma and head up to a spot that I picked about 2 and 1/2 weeks ago.

[00:16:46]But this time we're looking for greens instead of conicas.

[00:16:53]Okay, we're walking in.

[00:16:55]Found a few greenies on the way.

[00:16:57]But the roadside edge was picked out pretty hard.

[00:17:00]As where most people are picking right now.

[00:17:03]And as I came further in, I'm greeted by this beautiful sight right here.

[00:17:08]A nice medium-sized green.

[00:17:25]>> We have come to the end of the airstrip.

[00:17:27]We're going to try going up into this direction to see what we can find.

[00:17:52]Beauty.

[00:17:58]Classic.

[00:18:13]There's a nice one.

[00:18:21]It's going to like really nice dried.

[00:18:23]Eventually you start to learn how they'll look dried just from how they are fresh.

[00:18:30]And when they're like that, you just know. This nice one. That one will dry nice between them. Okay, so we did get a few mushrooms, but we're back at camp now. Look at that beautiful one.

[00:18:41]And we're going to weigh these up. It's not a lot, but there's lots of greens and a few blondies. Partial basket, 7.15.

[00:18:50]10.08.

[00:18:55]10.39.

[00:18:57]Okay, 27.62 lb of almost all greenies. Nice.

[00:19:03]Yesterday's are looking really good on the drying racks. Going to condense those down soon and then bag up the ones from the day before and get yesterday's above the wood stove. Things are slowing down fast here. Got a few more places I still want to look before it's over, but it's definitely starting to slow down and the greens just aren't producing in abundance like we were hoping, but they are great quality.

[00:19:26]They're just struggling because they're so dry. So, there was quite a few that were blowing out like that tall today.

[00:19:31]Not a whole lot of babies coming, just a few here and there. It could still change.

[00:19:36]So, we're keeping an open mind.

[00:19:38]But, based on what I'm seeing right in here now, that's the assessment. Anyways, I'm going to cycle through a whole bunch of mushrooms, move things forward in this in the system here. Okay, we're just condensing our blow rack mushrooms.

[00:19:51]Let's get together into the dryer.

[00:19:54]Dryer gets way ahead of the blow rack.

[00:19:57]It's about twice the speed on average.

[00:20:02]And usually less sporing, as well.

[00:20:05]And that's including putting the mushrooms three or four times as deep on the racks.

[00:20:13]And now that the ones in the dryer have shrunk down to about a third the size, I can move all these in there. I'll keep the greens separated from the conicas.

[00:20:23]So, here's a mushroom from in the dryer.

[00:20:28]Basically ready to flash, about 85% dry.

[00:20:32]Here's outside of the Here's on the blow rack.

[00:20:35]Still soft.

[00:20:36]The inside hasn't dried yet.

[00:20:39]But, they have to shrink down and at this point, it pretty much stops having the chance to spore cuz the outside of the mushroom is dried out.

[00:20:54]Look at how beautiful that mushroom is.

[00:20:55]Okay, we are cleaning mushrooms. I'm going to weigh up and get some dry ratios. We got so many dried here. It's awesome and the quality is looking really good on a lot of this.

[00:21:06]So, I'm pretty excited about that.

[00:21:08]Even some of these big ones have dried really nicely. That one's about 85% 90% dried. These ones still have to be flashed for a couple hours.

[00:21:17]But, other than that, they're ready.

[00:21:19]These ones need a little longer. When they're still squishy like that, there's still a risk of cooking them when you go to flash. So, we're going to air dry these for a few more hours. Greens almost always take longer to dry because they're double and triple walled. And that moisture is just in those walls. It's hard to uh hard to dry them for that reason.

[00:21:37]Okay, we're going to see how much dried we got. It was 148.87 lb of fresh.

[00:21:44]Let's see what we got.

[00:21:49]Plus 2.88. 16.74.

[00:21:53]16.74.

[00:21:57]8.89 to 1. So, we beat 9 to 1. That's pretty good. And a lot of the quality is is great.

[00:22:04]It's all like that. Nice conicas and some nice greens.

[00:22:08]Awesome. Look at this weather. That's possibility of rain.

[00:22:12]I hope it rains. We need it so bad. Like it rained today for half an hour to an hour, and you can't even tell. The ground is just completely dry. Have the 16 almost 17 lb boxed up.

[00:22:25]Got the stuff from yesterday, which was around another 100 lb or something.

[00:22:31]And now it's flashing, and it's probably the nicest batch of morels quality-wise we've had on this fire for the conicas.

[00:22:37]So, that's exciting. It's cuz it was out of the green top trees, and the mushrooms were at the perfect stage. And then we also have one of our bags of Ivan tea that has done a light ferment, and it's now being dried back.

[00:22:49]And Randy's pine pollen he's been working on.

[00:22:54]How's that looking? Oh, it smells amazing.

[00:22:57]Look at this. I'm going to give it a good shake.

[00:23:00]There's no way to look underneath, eh?

[00:23:04]Not unless you got a light.

[00:23:06]>> I do have a light.

[00:23:09]If I could get to it.

[00:23:13]Yeah, there's a pretty good layer in there. I think you're going to get quite a bit out of this.

[00:23:17]>> Yeah, it's up past the thing.

[00:23:18]>> Pine pollen is not cheap to buy, so that's a lot.

[00:23:22]Awesome.

[00:23:27]Rain water falling on my head.

[00:23:30]What chance is there to see the rain?

[00:23:32]Yeah, we need this. And I have the honor of being the grill master during this thunderstorm.

[00:23:37]What a pleasure.

[00:23:40]Oh, yeah.

[00:23:42]You know it.

[00:23:47]Oh, yeah.

[00:23:48]Flame broiled.

[00:23:52]Should be just about there.

[00:23:56]That's a meal fit for a morel picker.

[00:23:59]Scallop potatoes and yams.

[00:24:02]Running low on ingredients, but we made these big burgers with cabbage instead of lettuce, so they're real crunchy.

[00:24:08]And then some nice pickled beets.

[00:24:12]And it is pouring rain outside. It's supposed to rain all week now.

[00:24:16]Okay, it is almost time for bed.

[00:24:20]Dinner was incredible.

[00:24:22]Mushrooms are flashing away here.

[00:24:26]Wood stove is loaded up.

[00:24:29]It rained for about an hour straight, really hard. So, that was enough that it could change things.

[00:24:36]If something's going to happen on this fire to end the season, we got all the ingredients now.

[00:24:43]A week of sun, bunch of rain.

[00:24:46]Let's see what happens next.

[00:24:54]Nice.

[00:24:56]Look at those beauties.

[00:24:58]Those have shrank right down all these greens.

[00:25:01]These are the ones we picked today.

[00:25:03]Looking nice.

[00:25:08]Hope you enjoyed it. If this rain kicks up in, then we'll do a couple more weeks here at least.

[00:25:14]If it doesn't, then we're nearing the end. So, we'll see what happens from here.

[00:25:19]Um because of our setup, we've been so comfortable all season and our expenses have been extremely low compared to normal because of the solar power generator and everything else. There was a bunch of food here that was ready to expire, so we saved a lot of money on food. And we didn't have to go to town only twice the whole season. One of those times was to ship off mushrooms and pick up loot.

[00:25:40]So, we didn't need to do food runs. We didn't need to go get fuel. So, that alone saved thousands of dollars. So, by saving that and minimizing our expenses, even though the fire was relatively average, we actually did quite well here already and it's been a great time. So, hope you're enjoying so far. We'll see you next time.

[00:26:04]And that concludes today's episode.

[00:26:07]If you enjoyed the video, then give it a like and subscribe to our channel to follow along.

[00:26:11]Let us know in the comment section what you enjoyed the most.

[00:26:15]You can find our online shop in the video description where we have dried morels available.

[00:26:19]Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.