Savvy Shrooms

04/17/2025

Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to continue my channel for this season as I am having medical problems. Please continue to go out into the forest and enjoy nature. I hope to be able to restart my business again in the future but I'm not sure. Thank you for all of the kindness you have shown me and all the interest that you have taken in mushrooms through my channel. I love all of you.

04/10/2025

Are you seeing ads on my post? Because you absolutely should not! I hate Facebook's incentive program and I have no intention of trying to make money that way. Please let me know if you are seeing advertisements on my page as I have specifically turned off the settings which allow them to play ads during my videos. I want you to be able to enjoy my content without brain rot from unnecessary marketing nonsense. I attempted in the past to do their monetization program and they only pay like one penny per video and if you don't make $36 they never give it to you anyways and I decided whether or not they were going to pay me I fundamentally disagree with the concept. I hope to keep my content ad-free for as long as possible! Thank you for being here on my page watching my content. Nobody pays me to do this and I do it because I love it! I do get paid for private hikes of which I charge $50 per person per hour which is significantly lower than other rates in the area which can be roughly $270 for an hour and a half in Asheville. As far as I am aware, I am the only certified forager in McDowell County because the health department told me I was the only one that registered with them at the time but if you know of another one I would love to make friends. Anyways thank you again and have an awesome day! Hopefully ad free.

If you like my stuff and do want to give me money for some reason as a tip I would be happy to take it. But I'm not forcing anybody to watch advertisements so I can get paid.

04/10/2025

If you decide to cultivate your own mushrooms at home, one popular way to grow them is on wooden logs and another way is on blocks of grain or similar substrates. Whichever method you choose, when your blocks have fruited to your satisfaction and start lowering their output of mushrooms because they have consumed most of the nutrients they need, the remnants can be discarded and make an excellent addition to compost. If you grow enough of them you can have exclusively mushroom compost! My boyfriend Alex owns Catawba Mushroom Partners which is my favorite mushroom cultivator in our entire region (for many years prior to even knowing him!) which is why we have such an abundance.

Here you can see my 3-year-old son standing with the giant pile of mushroom compost we have. As a commercial mushroom producer he produces quite a lot of compost! I absolutely love exploring the compost pile on different days to see the various things that have grown there.

Last night there was a frost so there's not particularly a lot of mushrooms there today except for some ink caps but many days there are lots of edible mushrooms to be foraged for. I also see lots of life such as slugs and snails and other bugs who enjoy mushrooms and mycelium. And one of my favorite things to find is lots of different kinds of strange and interesting slime molds!

Slime molds are very similar to fungi but they belong in their own kingdom known as protista. Mushroom compost can be excellent to add to regular soil for gardening. Many types of mycelium from fungi can help improve the nutrient content of your soil. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi is something similar you can add as well to boost the efficiency of nutrient and moisture uptake in your plants.

04/10/2025

Found some more morels! I have been spending so much time in the woods with no phone signal It actually took two whole days for this video to finish converting from being edited 🤦🏻‍♀️. I mentioned a frost that happened yesterday as well as hiking to a big mountain that I went to yesterday. Anyways hopefully you find some useful tips in this video that can lead you to your own golden treasure of beautiful yellow morel mushrooms. They are a joy to find because they are so challenging sometimes! It feels like a hide and seek game 😀

04/04/2025

So I'm still obsessed with this book that I mentioned in some previous posts that is helping me hunt for treasure. It led me on a while to venture to a beautiful place near Mountain Unaka in Tennessee. Due to the elevation being so much higher up there they did not yet have their spring mushroom flush. However I did come across some rock lichen that is also known as rock tripe. Lichen is created from a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae or cyanobacterium. Umbilicaria Is the name of the genus this type of lichen falls under and is one of very few edible varieties of lichen. I have eaten it and it is not something that I would want to eat on purpose. However being in a remote area of a mountain peak that you can only get to from the Appalachian trail can sometimes mean that you need a good source of survival food. This lichen is not particularly appetizing but in an emergency situation it could save your life from starvation.

04/01/2025

Lichen stultus, also known as Fools Lichen, is most often found by the terribly gullible in the center of places of least pollution. The more you explore, the more likely you are to find some. 😉



Lichen is actually a symbiotic relationship between fungi and alga or cyanobacterium. No foolin

04/01/2025

Ramps aka Wild Leeks are growing in McDowell County North Carolina! They are delicious and sometimes hard to find wild spring edible with a short foraging window similar to morel mushrooms short season. I just wanted to give you a heads up that you can find them now! 😁

This plant tastes a bit like garlic and green onion and does not have to be pulled out completely to enjoy. Simply cut the top leaves off and leave the bulb in the ground so they can continue to propagate. Some do choose to pull the entire plant out which results in it no longer growing or multiplying. If you choose to do so please do so sparingly so that they can be enjoyed for years to come instead of pulled all at once. Personally I don't see any to pull the bulb but some will argue that it is sweeter or stronger flavoring. I think the greens are just as strong and flavorful. These are a vitamin A, C, selenium and chromium, rich food for wildlife as well as for people. These delicious wild edibles can be consumed raw or cooked and I personally love making homemade ramp butter, adding them to salads, and sauteing them with other greens and a bit of fat back or bacon.

Hint: If you find some wild ramps you might also find morel mushrooms nearby! They tend to grow in the same places. 🍄

This particular one I keep in my yard where I transplanted it from another location in order to help me stay aware of the season. Ramps can sometimes be difficult to transplant and require very specific environmental conditions regarding pH level, moisture, depth, dappled sunlight, and can only be transplanted at specific times of the year during particular temperature ranges. Be sure to be aware of those things if you attempt this because it can take 7 years for a ramp to grow from seed. It took a lot of work for it to get where it is. That's why I prefer not to harvest the bulbs in general and I simply eat the leaves.

Please be careful not to misidentify them and mistake them with other plants with similar shaped leaves such as flowers like daffodils or lilies or orchids and whatnot.. It could be a very bad mistake. ☠️ To help you not mistake them for something else just know when you rub this leaf it will very obviously smell like onion and garlic and there will be no mistaking the scent. Just make sure you have the ability to smell and don't have COVID or something. Daffodil bulbs and some other plans can be toxic to consume. You can see where I have pinched off the very end of this leaf to smell it and confirm its identity.

Happy foraging 🌿

03/31/2025

I found my first morel of 2025! 🥳
Startown, North Carolina USA

I'll be posting my find on the website as soon as I get signal enough to do so 😀 https://www.thegreatmorel.com/sightingsubmit/

Many people search their entire lives to find these mushrooms when they don't know the right places to look and they don't find them. Or they do know the right places to look and they don't realize how well these mushrooms can camouflage in with the brush and fallen leaves. They're unique texture lends well to their ability to camouflage themselves. Personally I think that's the hardest part about finding them... Knowing the environmental factors in which they grow (fairly neutral pH soil, near a dead or dying tree of specific varieties, certain necessary moisture content and ground temperature levels, filtered sunlight, very specific time of year in early spring) and literally being able to see them separated from the leaves.

Once I see one it's easier to see them all. The very first time I ever found one it was literally one inch away from my knee where I had bent down on the ground to try to see any of them. I was shocked it was so close to me and I had not seen it even though I had been actively scanning the environment to find one. That was the big surprise to me when it comes to morel hunting... Their incredible camouflage. But today I got pretty lucky because this bright yellow morel stood out very well against the brown leaves and it didn't take much for me to find it since I already knew I was in a good spot.

It's only onwards and upwards from here folks... Yay mushroom season for Western North Carolina! Happy hunting 🍄

PS: If you are from a different region and are curious what USDA zones I explore in I explore in zones 6, 7, and 8 (both a and b sub zones). Perhaps that will help you draw comparison to your own USDA zone region wherever you are as to which time of year you should be looking for your mushrooms. For these morels you want ground temperature above 50° F.

03/30/2025

This has absolutely nothing to do with mushrooms but I'm so excited I just wanted to share it with everybody. 😁 I made friends with a Luna moth today!

You never know what you'll find when you are foraging or are simply wandering around your own backyard. Today my beautiful find was this lovely little friend. It's quite rare apparently to see Luna moths during the day and that is because they are much more active at night. Spring Luna moths have a beautiful purple line that runs around the entirety of their wings while summer time Luna moths have yellow around the base of their wings instead of purple. This spring Luna moth may have been easily sighted due to simply being exhausted. That's often why people will see them in the day is because they are tired and they have nowhere better to be to rest. Another reason that you might see them is that they only live about 10 days in their moth form in order to simply breed and lay eggs before they pass away. It's such a rare thing to meet one alive and be able to hold it. I feel incredibly lucky to have had this moment.

Some say Luna moths symbolize new beginnings and transformation. As all of the things transform around us as the beauty of spring emerges that seems so spot-on. It is the beginning of mushroom season and the beginning of so many beautiful things that we will see this year.

I carefully gathered this moth from the ground where it was at risk of being eaten by my chickens and I gently transferred it to a higher place of safety near one of its favorite trees (a walnut) where it can rest or pass away in peace.

There are so many things that the average person misses because they either do not spend enough time outside to see it or their eyes aren't trained to notice the details. However when you spend each day looking for morel mushrooms you will notice suddenly your eyes are highly trained to see the details... And suddenly like a magic picture you will notice more than you ever saw before. It is one of the most beautiful things about foraging.

I hope you enjoyed seeing this beautiful little friend as much as I did today and that she inspires you to go outside and see what you can see in your own backyard. ❤️

03/30/2025

Well it wasn't a morel, but I found my first edible mushroom of the season (unless you count the dried out old remnants of turkey tails from last year that still look nice 😆)! Cerioporus squamosus Is nicknamed the pheasant back or the dryads saddle due to the shape it has when it is full grown and quite large. The Latin meaning of Squamosus is scaly which refers to the scaly surface of these caps.

Finding them when they are full grown means finding a very tough mushroom that most would find inedible or only suitable for a mushroom soup stock. I love when I get lucky enough to find them small like this. Ideally you want to find them when the pores underneath are so tiny that they are reminiscent of your own human skin. As the mushrooms grow larger their pores open up and the larger the specimen gets the larger the pores are. If you see open pores they are too large for a saute pan in my opinion and should be put in the soup stock broth. The one I found was perfectly tender and delicious when sauteed. They're an interesting mushroom because they have a smell reminiscent to cucumbers or watermelon rind and a very similar flavor. I have found most people I come across love them or hate them. I'm a fan. If I find them I'm going to pick them and take them home to eat.

Finding this mushroom awakened something... It's like suddenly I can hear the mushrooms calling out waiting to be found. It made me really excited. 😁 I love finding mushrooms and foraging for food in the woods! It's definitely my happy place... And I'm so absolutely thrilled the mushroom hunting season has started for me once again.

As more and more mushrooms flush I'm sure I will receive more questions about them. If you would like a personalized guided hike I offer woodland tours for $50 per hour per person. I guarantee we will find something edible whether or not that is a mushroom. I most frequently am asked to do hikes through people's personal backyards and private properties so they can discover the species they have at home. I also offer hikes on public land including in the National Forests and other public places where mushroom hunting is allowed. I'm open to hiking with all age groups and all ability levels and can customize my hikes according to your specific needs. Let's get out there and find something delicious! Send me a message to schedule your own hike. My calendar feels up quickly and I do allow advanced booking. Please note that there is a possibility of my son being in attendance on our hike. I look forward to finding the wild things with you!

P.s never eat anything that you can't confidently identify with absolute certainty and know 100% how to properly prepare. All mushrooms can potentially have lookalikes and the look-alikes vary depending on your own personal identification skill level. Someone less skilled in identification can potentially see more look-alikes than somebody who is more skilled in identification as they can miss very important features such as the difference between gills and pores. Does mushroom does have a close look alike with gills instead of pores known as Neolentinus lepideus or the Train Wreck mushroom. There are other potential look-alikes depending on how many specific features that you look for. Proper identification requires all features match. If you think a mushroom only *kind of* looks like or matches 99 out of 100 features the mushroom is probably not it. Hope that helps 😊

For more information regarding specifically Cerioporus squamosus you can find a lot under its former name and current synonym Polyporus squamosus: https://www.mushroomexpert.com/polyporus_squamosus.html

03/27/2025

Atlas and I escaped to Tennessee yesterday to get some really good hiking in. I've been struggling lately to go mushroom foraging because nearly all of my favorite mushroom spots have either been obliterated or are closed off and inaccessible due to Hurricane Helene damage. I was very much looking forward to harvesting ramps this year but the road to get to them is gone. The few morel spots I can still access have not bloomed anything yet. So my solution? Escape to a different woods! It was absolutely beautiful on Roan Mountain and traipsing through the Cherokee National Forest. The only mushrooms I found were some hardened old shelf mushrooms like Phellinus species but I saw a beautiful scene of moss and pine and filled my adventure bucket at least a few drops. I've been pretty obsessed with this book that came out recently called There's Treasure Inside by the author Jon Collins-Black. And in my spare moments I have been trying to solve his riddles and clues to reach the millions of dollars worth of beautiful treasures he has hidden. I'm not associated with the guy at all but the book has been fantastic and it's definitely fun to read and play. You really never know what you might find traveling through the beautiful places. You might just find some sunshine and vitamin D, you might find some old ruins, a beautiful mossy mushroom scene, You might see wildlife and some wild people too, and maybe just maybe you will find a real treasure! You won't know unless you get out there. I invite you to join me in exploring.

03/21/2025

This is the type of morel you can expect to find right now in USDA zones 7a and 7b. Little baby ones! They are much more visible but still quite small in zones 8a and 8b.

Stay tuned on https://www.thegreatmorel.com/morel-sightings/ to see if they have been found and reported near you. And if you find one please be sure to submit a report for the rest of us.

Photo credit unknown. If this is your image and you would like to be credited please let me know. I haven't found mine yet but don't worry I'm still looking!

03/21/2025

Hericium corroloides aka Coral tooth fungus, scrambled with my own backyard chicken eggs for breakfast today.

A lot of people ask me how to cook mushrooms. Often that is the point where people get anxious and end up not trying the mushrooms they have foraged or bought. I'm here to let you know it's much easier than you think to cook mushrooms. Some of the absolute most simple ways to cook a mushroom are to either dry saute them or to saute them in a small amount of butter or oil. Dry sauteing means to cook it without anything additional added in. The natural moisture inside of the mushroom is released when cooking and dry sauteing can help to hold in the flavor without causing your mushroom to be extra squishy from adding water or changing the natural flavor from adding butter or other things. Dry sauteing is a fantastic way to cook any kind of mushroom but I find is especially popular method for cooking morels and chanterelles. It's also fantastic way to cook lion's mane mushrooms and all of its cousins. Pretty easy! Just throw your mushrooms in the pan and turn on the heat. Watch your mushrooms and you will see that they change color as they cook and the darker the color change the more cooked that they are. It's best to overcook your mushrooms rather than undercook your mushrooms as undercooked mushrooms can potentially cause GI upset. However, once you see the whole fruiting body change color to any color other than its original it is cooked.

Personally I prefer to add a little bit of butter. I like the taste of butter. I associate butter with mushrooms as I try all of my first mushrooms with just a little bit of butter. Because I try them all the same way every time it helps me to differentiate their original flavor from the butter itself. Some mushrooms though have such a light flavor that it is better to use nothing at all.

I used butter this morning. I chopped up some beautiful coral tooth mushrooms that my boyfriend Alex cultivated at Catawba Mushroom Partners . They just added this mushroom to their grow room this month so be sure to check them out at the Hickory Farmers Market and other places their mushrooms are available if you are local to Western NC and would like to try them yourself. Contact them directly for the information regarding the closest market they have near you.

I sauteed the mushrooms until they were this lovely golden orange color and then I cracked some eggs from my chickens on top and sauteed until they were cooked. I added a little garlic powder, pepper and salt, and a drizzle of ketchup on top because that's how I like it. I think scrambles are fantastic because they are so easy and there's really not much you can do to go wrong with them. You can add in all your favorite vegetables or different kinds of meat or keep it simple with just eggs and mushrooms. I love the variety and flavor of scrambles and they are a frequent breakfast of mine.

Hericium corroloides aka coral tooth fungus has been shown in studies to help regulate the gut microbiota and reduce oxidative stress. Studies show it has the potential to help alleviate Alzheimer's disease and may even help to prevent it. Many studies have been done on its cousin Hericium erinaceus that show neuroprotective properties and increased brain cell regeneration amongst many other properties. These types of mushrooms can aid in memory retention and have other benefits to brain health. I strive to eat them everyday.

Here is the study referencing prevention of Alzheimer's disease, reduction in oxidative stress, and improved gut microbiota utilizing Hericium corroloides:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10489620/ #:~:text=Hericium%20coralloides%20Ameliorates%20Alzheimer's%20Disease,and%20Regulating%20Gut%20Microbiota%20%2D%20PMC

So yep.. there's my breakfast! Hope it helps you enjoy more mushrooms too 😊

03/21/2025

While you're out hunting for morels and other mushrooms, another neat treasure to look for this time of year are shed antlers. Dear, elk, moose, and similar animals shed their antlers each winter and grow a new set. The old set is generally left behind and I often find them in areas where you see marks on the trees from deer rubbing their antlers on the bark to try to remove them. It is very rare to find a complete set of both shed antlers but it's something I hope for. This time of year before all of the undergrowth has grown up and the leaves have filled in it is a lot easier to see them. Squirrels and some other animals will take them and eat them for calcium and to sharpen their teeth. Sometimes you find them with bite marks all over them. Their biggest look alike for me is sticks that the bark has come off of. They glow white against the underbrush.

I found this one while I was looking for mushrooms yesterday. I am not sure if it is something known as a spike antler which is a genetic mutation that causes deer to have one sharp antler or if it is a broken off piece of a larger antler. Regardless... I was very excited to find it! 😊 Besides being obsessed with mushrooms (and collecting a lot of their dried specimens) I also have quite a large bone collection. I'm considering turning this antler into a pen or a small knife or something else crafty. Got any ideas?

03/18/2025

During mushroom season it's almost guaranteed I will have a twig or a bit of moss in my hair at any given time.

03/17/2025

Hey it's a flashback from March of last year when we were looking for morels! It's so funny I talk about emerging from my cave because that's exactly how it feels again this year 😂

Last year I found my first morel March 20th, 2024
In the year prior I found my first morel April 6th 2023

I think that my morel is probably outside already this year lol. We got some awesome rain over the weekend that if they weren't outside already... Well it should encourage them to pop out now! Generally I'll find mushrooms flushing between 3 to 10 days after a large rainstorm.

03/17/2025

Morel season has officially started with the finding of the first morel mushrooms in our region which were sighted in Georgia. You can keep track of morel sightings and submit your own on this website: https://www.thegreatmorel.com/morel-sightings/

I am struggling to get out and go mushroom hunting with my toddler going through the tough part of age 3. We also recently recovered from a horrendous about of norovirus Gen type 2 which is the really really bad kind and was the week of essentially the stomach plague. We're just now starting to feel better again and my son has caught some respiratory bug. On the brighter side of things I also am deeply in love with a mushroom farmer named Alex and that is also worked to distract me a bit from my own content. It's easy to get distracted during the off-season and it's hard to get the ball rolling again when the season starts. But just like the insects nestled in the leaves and the creatures awaking from their hibernations and the mushrooms finally pushing through the surface of the wooden soil to emerge and flush and bloom... I'm waking up too. Give me a little patience and I'm going to work at trying to post some more content for you guys very soon.

In the meantime be sure to check out this website and search my page for my prior morel content if you'd like some tips and tricks to get started on your own search.

I'll give you some hints... Morel mushrooms are mycorrhizal. That means they form a symbiotic relationship with a plant or tree or bacteria in a certain stage of its life cycle. It will only grow with this particular thing. The types of morels that grow in our area I find tend to be mycorrhizal with dying trees. The trees tend to be apple, pear, elm, tulip poplar, cottonwoods, sycamore, an ash... I don't believe I have yet to find one around an oak tree but I wouldn't put it past them.

Morels prefer pretty neutral soil. Some good indicators of the soil type that they prefer are plants like violet flowers, trillium, and may apple plants. When I see these I tend to look around those areas.

I generally avoid areas with too many rhododendron, azalea, and dog hobble as these plants tend to indicate acidic soil and are not the right environment. The nice thing is I can see this from a great distance so I don't have to waste my time climbing through a forest full of these plants in search of something I am less likely to find.

The morels prefer Southern slopes which receive the first warm sunlight of the season and filtered sunshine. Not too bright to dry everything out and not too shady to cause things to be too damp. I also tend to find them within about 100-200 ft of a body of water such as a creek. It's possible for them to be in other areas without a creek though as long as they receive adequate moisture but are not too soggy.

There are various theories regarding finding them at particular elevations that I have not quite figured out the pattern yet to. However I do see that they seem to prefer soil temperature to be above 50°. It's interesting that they like that temperature because I find that's about the same temperature that my honey bees like as well. They don't want to go outside when it's too cold. So many different things rest when it's below 50°. We are just starting to see the glimpse of warm seasons and are still having colder temperatures at night. When the overnight temperatures start to rise around the '50s there will be more activity from plants emerging and insects and mushrooms too.

I'm sure there's other tips in tidbits of information I could add that aren't coming to me right at this moment but hopefully that gives you a nice start.

Happy mushroom season! Get out there and show me what you find 😊

The Great Morel sighting maps are a great resource for monitoring the progression of the morel mushroom and when one might begin their foraging adventure. New and improved morel sightings map along with historical maps to help monitor and watch for the morel coming to a woods near you.

02/14/2025

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope that you are surrounded by love today even if it's just loving yourself. I know our news feeds are full of hearts today, if this bothers you maybe go outside and look for some mushrooms? Otherwise here is the only heart shape mushroom I can recall having found in the wild. A lovely multicolored specimen of a psychoactive mushroom known as Gymnopilus luteofolius which naturally contains psilocybin and psilocin. Not only is this mushroom beautiful, but philosophically how interesting it is to think about how love is this chemical combination (things like oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, vasopressin, and a huge one that's not talked about quite as often Phenethylamine) that floods our brain and changes our perspective just the same way psychoactive chemicals like hallucinogens can do. It's amazing how our minds can paint our whole reality. So whether you love Valentine's Day or you absolutely hate Valentine's Day I hope you have a great day. I love you no matter where you land because you're here reading my random stuff. Thank you! ❤️

PS While I will love spending time with my mushroom farming boyfriend Alex today...tomorrow is the part of this holiday I love the most. Half priced candy day! Do you celebrate that too?