Day 344: It took every bit of my hobbit-sense to find this small sampling of Chanterelles today, but I figured if I didn't go out now, the hard rain we have coming in on Wednesday would destroy any which might have popped through the ground. I knew it was too early, despite the fact that some years, I've harvested them in early September. I don't know their timetable, not consciously, but that same hobbit-sense for mushrooms told me that I was not likely to find many, not yet. Indeed, the recent rain (the first we've had in weeks) had spoiled many of the buttons, mold already growing on their caps, but I don't pick buttons. I leave them there to make more Chanterelles, using the wisdom which tells me it's not a good idea to saw off the branch I'm sitting on. This is a conservation strategy anyone who has ever gone mushrooming with me has heard me preach. I've seen too many "gold mines" plumbed to extinction by greedy professional mushroom-hunters. While this handful won't make a dinner, I can at least say that I didn't go out of 2020 skunked.
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