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While many of us are getting ready to hunker down for the winter, Manitoba mushroom foragers continue to scour fields and forests in the final days of the season in the hopes of spotting some edible treasures.
Under a canopy of trees or Manitoba’s October sun, Ehor Ruday is on the hunt for his favourite fungi.
“There’s a one, honey mushroom,” Ruday says with delight. He slices its stem swiftly then tosses it into his bucket, waiting on a bed of fallen foliage and pine needles. A comforting earthy yet musty scent hangs in the crisp shaded air.
“And more over there, I see them.”
Ruday grabs his pail and weaves through the woods.
“It’s just adventuresome,” he told Global News this week.
“I end up giving away most of them anyways, but that’s not the point. It’s just the fun of finding them.”
Ehor Ruday forages at least twice a week — a pastime he learned in Ukraine. “It’s a way of life in Ukraine,” Ruday says. Here, he’s harvesting honey mushrooms near Grand Beach, MB.
Rosanna Hempel / Global News
When mushrooms like chanterelles and honey mushrooms are in season, Ruday forages at least twice a week — a hobby he learned in Ukraine about 50 years ago. He examines each cap, ring and stem and only keeps those he’s 100 per cent certain are safe.
“It’s a way of life in Ukraine. Everybody picks mushrooms just to supplement their food source,” he said.
It’s a tradition Ruday continued in Canada and still shares with his family.
“Once you get to like it, it’s just, it’s hard to live it down.”
Although Ruday has been gathering mushrooms for years, Winnipeg business owner and mushroom enthusiast Tom Nagy says foraging is becoming more popular, especially since the pandemic.
Along with gardening and hiking, some Manitobans also opted to pick mushrooms as a way to safely spend time with others, he said.
Tom Nagy gives community workshops to share his “mycological fungal appreciation.”
Courtesy: Symon Ptashnick
“I think that for a lot of people, it’s a way to feel more grounded,” Nagy said.
“The beauty of foraging is that this is something that we all used to do.”
Nagy gives community workshops and sells mushroom-growing kits, to share what he calls his “mycological fungal appreciation.”
He launched his company, River City Mushrooms, in 2017. In his West Broadway home, Nagy is equipped to inoculate sterile bags of sawdust with actively growing mushroom cultures. The mycelium gets a chance to grow and settle before the bag is cut open weeks later, wherefrom mushrooms sprout over days if the conditions are just right: their environment has enough fresh air and humidity along with moderate lighting.
He developed an interest in mushrooms through his passion for plants, Nagy, who studied restoration ecology in Ontario, told Global News on Thursday.
“As anyone that can appreciate the natural world, when you start to look at one thing, you very quickly realize that it’s tied to everything else.”
“Mushrooms are beautiful,” he said. “Mushrooms and fungi are fundamental decomposers in terrestrial environments, and so they create the soil that then makes the nutrients available for the next generation of life.”
And he continues to be drawn to them, in part because the field of mycology is an actively evolving one, including in bioremediation and pharmacological research.
“It’s not something where it’s like, ‘Oh, if you want to learn about this field, go to a university library, dust off some old textbooks from decades ago, and it’s all there.’ This is something that each of us as citizen scientists, we can contribute to the learning process.”
Nagy admits he grew up thinking most mushrooms were poisonous.
“The truth is quite far from that in reality,” he said.
“People are really into mushrooms, or they’re totally afraid of mushrooms.”
Bolete and oyster mushrooms are commonly-found groups in Manitoba that are good for beginners, Nagy said.
He advises going with an expert first and reading from a few different sources before gathering or ingesting any.
Oyster mushrooms (a Hypsizygus ulmarius pictured here) are among commonly-found groups in Manitoba that are good for beginners, mushroom enthusiast Tom Nagy says. “These will grow on largely deciduous hardwood trees. They have a white cap with gills that are decurrent, and so they grow slightly down the stem with a short stalk.”
Tom Nagy / Supplied
“I advocate for a hands-on tactile experience,” he said.
“When you have a specimen that you’re not sure what it is, you can narrow it down really quickly because it’s like, ‘Oh, OK, I need to look at the gill structure, the color of the cap. Does it have a ring? Does it have an underground structure that the mushroom emerges from?’”
Bolete mushrooms (a Boletus edulis pictured here) are among commonly-found groups in Manitoba that are good for beginners, mushroom enthusiast Tom Nagy says.
Tom Nagy / Supplied
Ruday applies that caution and says the flavours are worth every inspection and step.
Once cleaned and thoroughly cooked, mushrooms often make up the centrepiece in many a sauce and soup.
“Of course it’s based with heavy cream and dill and garlic, and it’s very delicious,” Ruday said.
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