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Vol. 90 Issue 44 • Wednesday, October 30, 2013 • www.arrowlakesnews.com • 250-265-3823 • $1.25 •
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The business of mushroom picking: 2013 another bumper year Claire paradis Arrow Lakes News
For some, picking mushrooms is more than a sport, it’s a business. In Nakusp, it’s big business, thanks to the proliferation of Pine mushrooms, also known as white Matsutake or Tricholoma magnivelare. These soughtafter mushrooms fetch better prices in Asia, and buying stations can pop up seasonally just like the mushrooms themselves. Long-time mushroom buyer and picker Jan Dahlen has witnessed bum-
The mighty Pine mushroom, and picker. Courtesy Dan Freeman
per crops to near-nil years and everything in between. She and her husband Dan Freeman have been running Dan and Jan’s Mushroom Station for two decades. This year, the mushroom season started on Sept. 6 and it’s been a busy one. With masses of mushrooms moving through (hundreds to thousands of pounds a day), prices have been low for pickers this fall. Per-pound prices vary with the supply, and during past seasons of relative scarcity Matsutake have fetched $30 a pound. During bountiful seasons like this one, the price drops: this year they started at $10, only to decline to $6 per pound during peak picking. In contrast, nearing the end of the season last fall, prices were $22 a pound. Even more plentiful years have seen the price go as low as $2. It’s not like the old days, Dahlen told the Arrow Lakes News, when prices were really good. She said changing values in the younger generation in Japan could have been behind a mushroom market crash a few years ago, but whatever the reason there has been a noticeable change. So why do people do it? It’s not just about the mushrooms, it’s also about the hunt. “That’s the fun part,” said Dahlen, “the picking. This year the volume’s
there, the excitement, too.” Dahlen, who grew up in the area, has been picking her whole life. She remembers when the first mushroom buyer opened in Nakusp at the dry cleaner’s in town, where the old Overwaitea building across from the Leland stands. The first buyer wasn’t very picky about cleanliness and didn’t grade the mushrooms, just paid the pickers their cash and packed the fungi off to the Coast. Times certainly have changed. Going through a bag of Pines I’d brought in, Dahlen had some expert advice, just in case I wanted to pack in my day job and become a commercial picker. Picking up each mushroom with her nitrilegloved hands, she showed me how to quickly clean the mushrooms, and how to squeeze the stem to check for worms (soft stems are more likely to be wormy). The grade of a Matsutake depends on its veil: number ones have a whole, intact veil; twos have most of it, and the decrease of veil and quality of the mushroom is reflected in lower perpound prices. Some pickers follow the Matsutake as they are busting above the surface of the soil in California, Vancouver Island, all the way up to the Queen Charlottes and, of course, in the Kootenays. Back in the days when she was pick-
Dan and Jan’s garage filled with Matsutake baskets. Courtesy Dan Freeman ing and not buying, Dahlen recalls a transformative trip to Terrace sleeping in a van with her husband and three other commercial mushroom hunters. When she woke up to frost on her blanket, she realized being an itinerant picker was not for her. After picking to sell for years, the couple began to buy direct for another buyer at the coast. It’s the coastal buyers who dictate the prices to regional stations, Dahlen told the Arrow Lakes News, and this year there were only two buying stations in Nakusp that pickers were selling to. When there aren’t literally tons of mushrooms, to fill up a truck, regional buyers will ship together, with Kaslo buyers sometimes sharing cargo space. But not all pickers are visitors, many of them are homegrown – folks who make a little extra money to pay for their
See Mushroom picking page 7
Driver saves garbage truck and self from fire near Summit Lake Claire paradis Arrow Lakes News
A fire caught a garbage truck driver by surprise on Oct. 23 near Summit Lake. The quick thinking man got the conflagration out in time. Courtesy Nakusp RCMP
“ I want to know more about mutual funds.”
A garbage truck dumped its load when it caught on fire near Summit Lake on the morning of Oct. 23. The driver of the truck had been picking up garbage from Castlegar and was en route to Nakusp. While he was compacting the load, he heard a large bang and shortly after saw smoke billowing out of the back of the truck. Compacting the garbage further to try to deprive any fire of oxygen, he stopped to check what was happening. Coming to a halt in a pullout, the driver emptied the smouldering garbage onto the roadside and sprayed it with a fire extinguisher in order to
save the truck from burning. From a nearby landline, he then called the Nakusp RCMP who arrived on scene, as did a Nakusp contractor equipped with a water tanker truck, along with personnel from the Ministries of Highways and Forests. The responders created a sand berm to prevent contamination of the lake, and the Ministry of the Environment was notified by RCMP. After the fire was out, both the sand and the garbage were loaded into a second truck. Luckily, the first truck was undamaged by the blaze. Although out of the Nakusp Volunteer Fire Department service boundary, Fire Chief Terry Warren went to the site as fire commissioner and as a citizen concerned about the health of
the lake. “He must have gotten a hot load somewhere along the way,” said Warren, who has never seen a garbage truck with a load on fire, although he has seen it with chip trucks. Burning garbage is not common, Communications Manager Robin Freedman told the Arrow Lakes News. This has been the second fire in ten years for Waste Management of Canada, according to her. Either people may have put materials in that can combust, or fire ash, which can set a load on fire. In this case, the driver followed procedure quickly and conscientiously, said the company rep, and the fire was extinguished quickly and safely.
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