One of the state’s few recognized experts on morel mushrooms — a perennial favorite in the world of haute cuisine — operates a farm in the far southeast corner of Allen County. LAST MONTH, though, his longstanding expertise was made official by the Kansas Department of Agriculture. Daniels was one of fewer than 50 Kansans to complete the inaugural certification workshop — held in conjunction with the Kaw Valley Mycological Society — where he was named an “approved mushroom identification expert.”
Brett and Mary Daniels’ farm, called Nordic Roots — a fixture at the Allen County Farmers Market — sits on a low hill off of a gravel road outside Savonburg.
A storm had blown across the county Wednesday night and, on Thursday, there were bathtub-sized puddles in the rutted road leading up to the Danielses’ land. A long curving driveway mounts the hill to their front door.
Brett Daniels, wearing a faded Pitt State T-shirt, stands in the yard his family has occupied for six generations, and explains how this season’s early humid weather will advantage the local morel hunter.
“It’s always hard to say how many will be out,” said Daniels of the fickle fungus. “It all has to do with the weather. But right now, with the rain, I bet they’re just popping out of the ground. They’re going to be coming up for the next couple of days for sure — matter of fact, I’m going out this evening.”
Daniels has been actively hunting morels for nearly 40 years. As a kid, he trailed behind his father and grandfather along the local creek beds, peering into the dark carcasses of fallen trees in search of the spongy delicacy, whose key feature is its honeycombed cap.
Current KDA food safety regulations require that mushrooms picked in the wild and intended for sale be individually inspected by just such an expert.
“Now, with my certificate,” said Daniels. “I’m a link between the KDA and being able to sell to the public — to bars, restaurants, grocery stores, farmers markets. And if I verify your mushrooms, you can do the same thing.”
But don’t expect Daniels, or any other mushroom hunter for that matter, to disclose his “hotspot.” “A guy wanted to go morel hunting with me today, and I told him no. What you do when you find them, you just remember where they are — and you don’t tell anybody.
“What you look for is an area with a lot of fallen trees. [Morels] love it when the trees start to die. They hold a symbiotic relationship with the tree. When a tree dies, it tells the spores to go ahead and make mushrooms.
“And so I will go out to a creek area that I own; I will look along the fallen timbers and in the washed out areas where it’s beginning to turn green. And I’ll tell you something else — morels follow fire. If you a have a fire, look around the edges of pastures and meadows where you have tree lines. There’s a good chance you’ll find them there. Once you find them, every year you can pretty much go back and they’re going to be there.
“And that’s because mycelium” — the hidden threadlike vegetative part of the fungus — “grows deep into the earth and spreads out like a big spider web. You really can’t affect that part too much or kill it off to where [morels] are growing less because you’re picking more — that’s just not going to happen.
“But when you do go out to pick morels, you should always take a mesh bag. That way you can spread your spores out. As you’re walking along, your spores fall out, and you’ll be fertilizing the area, and when you go back, you’ll have even more morels.”
Daniels often returns from a trip to the creek with 10 or 15 pounds worth of the trophy mushroom.
Because they’re tough to see and because their season is so fleeting — from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, depending on the weather — “a lot of people never find morels,” said Daniels. Or they find the wrong morels.
Part of Daniels’ expertise includes knowing the difference between true morels and their less appetizing, occasionally toxic, cousins. “So you’ve got your morel. But then you’ve got your false morel — this mushroom has a big red brain-looking thing on top. It literally looks like a brain, all wiggly, kind of an ugly red sucker. They call these beefsteaks. People eat them, although they’re considered to be a poisonous mushroom…. Then, after your false morel, you’ve got your half-free morel” — which has a long, thin shaft and a knobby head — “which people around here call dog peckers.”
But a false morel is not a useless find, said Mary Daniels — they’re often precursors pointing the way toward the real thing.
As for Brett, among the edible mushrooms growing in this section of the country, the renowned morel isn’t necessarily his favorite. “See, we have ‘chicken of the wood’ around here. It gets great big, and it’s beautiful.”
“It’s orange and yellow,” Mary said. “It looks like a sunset.”
“The outside edge, about that much of it,” said Brett, holding his finger and thumb a couple inches apart, “tastes like fried chicken. When you get back up to the other part of it, it tastes like fried squash. You just cook it up with garlic and butter. That’s the best way to have it.”
What more evidence of miracles do you need than to know that in some forested corner of southeast Kansas, if fortune is your friend, you could stumble across a fungus that looks like the sunset and tastes like fried chicken.
The Danielses — “She’s the brains, I’m the labor,” contends Brett — along with their two teenage children, Abi and Brody, sell their produce — okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, gooseberries, and now morels, amongst much else — at most of the local farmers markets, including Iola’s. But they can be contacted, in the meantime — especially during the morel season, which, Brett stresses, is now — at 620-228-0813. Or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NordicRoots
Savonburg family harvests rare delicacy
