Tips to foraging for mushrooms Thanksgiving weekend

If you're looking for a unique outdoor experience this Thanksgiving long weekend and want to contribute something to a family meal for next to nothing, you might want to try foraging.

More people have started foraging for food like wild mushrooms in recent years, according to Dennis Vidmar, owner of the Mush Hub Co. in Windsor.

Vidmar spoke to Afternoon Drive Thursday about some of his tips for finding the best fungi and staying safe while you do it.

You're running out of time

Vidmar said last year, the foraging season came to an end around the second or third weekend in October, but he wasn't sure if it might go a bit longer this time around.

"That's the beautiful part is that you never know, right? It's all based on different environmental factors," he said.

"How it looks like now with the recent rainfall that we received, maybe that's even going to push further."

He also said mushrooms have been more scarce this year because more and more people are picking up the pastime, which brings us to his next point.

Be an ethical forager

Vidmar said it is important for foragers to respect the fact they aren't the only beneficiaries of nature's bounty. 

In a lot of places in the Windsor area, mushrooms — like the chicken of the woods — can be found easily, next to walking paths in parks and on trails.

He said people should follow the 33 per cent rule when it comes to picking the wild mushrooms, in part because other foragers may also want some, but more because of the animals that rely on them as a food source.

"You'll find a chicken of the woods, but you'll find somebody go there and then destroy the whole pack by cutting it all up. And they're like, 'Well, it's OK. Next year, they're going to pop up.' It's not about that," he said.

"It's about the deer coming in the morning and having the ability to, you know, chow down some quality breakfast."

Verify before eating

Vidmar warns there are deadly mushrooms — the death angel and the galerina marginata are just two examples he gave that are in the area, so it is important that people either go with an experienced forager, or make sure to check the "top 10 verification aspects that are found commonly across" the internet.

Recently, a regular customer of his ingested a poisonous mushroom.

"He unfortunately went foraging amongst a variety of different mushrooms.… He picked a death angel. He sliced it up, cut it up and put it in," he said.

Luckily, that person induced vomiting and avoided worse.

Vidmar said that people should always do a spore print — a technique that helps tell what kind of mushroom a forager has picked.

He said he won't make a recommendation based on a picture alone.

"Even though [a picture is] a thousand words you need to go through the verification process as far as doing a spore print," he said.

"If you don't do the spore print, you're cutting a vital piece of information there."

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