Foraging Season 2025

Here in the Pacific Northwest, Amanita muscaria fruit in a small window of time in the middle of Fall. It’s within this time frame that I pick every mushroom that I sell for the rest of the season. I travel into forestry land up in the mountains, into misty valleys and anywhere that is within protected wilderness to pick the cleanest & healthiest mushrooms I can find. (Amanita muscaria is a bioaccumulator and can absorb toxins from the environment)

The Amanita foraging season for this past fall was beautiful, abundant and very busy!

In a normal year the mushrooms fruit slowly throughout the Fall. They start up high in the mountains and move down as the weather gets colder and wetter. Then when they hit the lowlands, the deciduous trees (like alder, birch and cottonwood) fruit before the conifers (like spruce, pine and fir trees). This is because deciduous (trees that drop their leaves in the Fall) need the mushrooms to bloom while the tree still has leaves and can produce sugars (remember Amanita mushrooms require sugars from their host tree to grow). 

This year was different.

It was dry as bones until mid-fall. I'd drive out to my early season Amanita spots and come home empty, spotting just a few baby mushrooms peeking their head above the soil, as if looking around to see if the rain was ever going to come so they could fully open up. 

Things changed quickly when the rain did come. Temperatures were cool enough for the lowland mushrooms to fruit and so all of the mushrooms decided to fruit at the same time. 

This created the conditions for some amazingly abundant fruiting patterns. Areas that normally would get a few mushrooms had huge flushes and one spot even produced the rare and magical fairy ring formation! 🧚🏼

The mushrooms fruited so quickly that I spent pretty much every day in some type of forest gathering up the Amanita mushrooms that presented themselves to me. I'd go back and forth between my coniferous and deciduous spots, filling up my dehydrators to max capacity before loading them into jars and putting them into the freezer. 

Though abundance means more work, it also meant I could be more picky with the mushrooms I did pick. Anything that wasn't in their absolute prime was left for the deer and squirrels, as I wasn't worried about getting enough mushrooms for the year. Ultimately I did fill up my freezers and I had a successful season overall, despite my earlier (unfounded) worries.

Overall, this year has truly reminded me of how blessed I am to be able to go into the woods and harvest this beautiful medicine by hand. I got to meet some amazing trees and fungi friends that were more than excited to share their magical fruits with me, knowing they would help others. 

Ultimately that is what Amanita is. A co-created gift from mother Earth, the trees and Amanita to help us all live life with a little less fear, and a little more trust that everything is going to work out in the end. ♥️ 🍄