Inside Northside's June/July 2005 issue

Earthly Delights

by Ann Gilbert

You might think that foraging for food was just a habit of early man—very early man—but a substantial number of folks today enjoy wild greens and such plucked from their own backyard or in nearby woods.

Shirley and John Welles of Ponchatoula certainly didn’t pass up the bounty flourishing on their 150 acres in a great bend of the Tangipahoa River, which has been home for some 60 years.

“We birded a lot,” says Shirley, as she recalls her many forays in search of feathered friends. It was natural that the Welles would begin to look not only up, but down, while in the great outdoors. “We were foragers. We ate weeds,” she says with a laugh. That included chickweed, purslane and thistle.
For many years, decades even, the two passed up the mushrooms scattered across the forest floor and even up tree trunks. But Shirley recalls a friend telling John in the early ’90s, “You’ve got some great mushrooms out there.”

He was referring to the golden fungi with a trumpet shape called chanterelle mushrooms. They flourish in the rich soil beneath oak trees in bottomland areas. The Welles began to search for this delicacy, which the good earth provided free. But John, being the salesman and artist that he was, felt compelled to share the wonderful earthy delight he loved so much.

He gathered buckets of chanterelles, mounded them in baskets that he decorated himself, and took his precious cargo to upscale restaurants in Baton Rouge and Hammond. Entering the front door, he asked to see the chef, only to be told to go to the back door. Shirley smiles. “Holding that beautiful basket, John would refuse to go to the back door.”

The chefs were impressed. While John was making one delivery, the chef got a call from his food broker. When asked if he needed mushrooms, he said no, he got all his mushrooms from John Welles. The Michigan company then requested Welles’ number. So began the retired couple’s mom and pop business on the banks of a scenic Louisiana river. That was almost 20 years ago. Today, Tangipahoa chanterelles are enjoyed in gourmet restaurants throughout the country.

John passed away in 2003, but Shirley and her friends continue to box the mushrooms in the glassed-in porch of her log-cabin style home on a bluff overlooking the rolling river. The season is short, from late May to August. The season is good for about six weeks, or until mid-July, says Shirley. “Then the bottom falls out of the market, because other areas start harvesting. Chanterelles fruit here first.” Last year, the chanterelle season was a washout because of Tropical Storm Bill. Rising water flooded the beds.

Scores of pickers forage for the mushrooms in the dark, damp woods—areas also favored by snakes. In fact, Shirley says many of her pickers are snake hunters, as well. A big grin crosses her face as she muses over the sight of “these big burly men bending down to snip the mushrooms with their little scissors.”

The men face hordes of mosquitoes, countless sticky spider webs and drenching humidity. “It’s not a fun thing, but the flip side is the wildflowers, the birds and all of nature,” says neighbor, friend and longtime-picker Lonnie Williams. On this March morning, he and Shirley delight in finding the first snowbell in bloom.

The men use buckets that hold six pounds of mushrooms. There are some 50 workers on the roster, but only about 15 pick every day. Their territory ranges from Honey Island Swamp to the Amite River. When picking chanterelles was a novelty, pickers would keep their favorite mushroom sites secret, but Williams says there are no secret places now. He sees people trespassing on his property, hiding behind trees and “even trying to disguise themselves with leaves on their heads.”

Shirley is quite particular about what mushrooms she accepts from her pickers. Dirty, wet and sandy fruit are unacceptable. Experienced foragers know to avoid riverbanks, where the fungi will pick up sand in their gills. Picking shortly after a rain is a no-no, although mushrooms wearing dew will do.

Areas surrounding oak trees are prime spots to search for the fruit, says Williams, because the blanket of leaves protects the chanterelles from dirt splashed up during rainstorms. When he was a neophyte at foraging for chanterelles, John told him, “Pick the first one and lick the bottom to see if it is gritty. If it is, move on. No amount of washing can get the sand out of the gills of a chanterelle.” Williams promises it’s a true story, recalling the time he cooked a batch with onions, butter and olive oil and had to throw it out because of the gritty taste. Even now, there is regret in his voice.

At 8 o’clock each summer morning, Shirley and her crew begin receiving deliveries from the pickers. Inside the workroom, the table holds mounds of the golden fruit. Mailing boxes tower in each corner. Shirley’s assistants scoop up the mushrooms with brown plastic dustpans and slide them into the boxes. Others tape the containers shut and slap on the mailing labels. Shirley enters the room waving a fax that has just come in. “Great, we sold all of them today!” Shirley pays the pickers $5 a pound. The food broker sells them to restaurants for $16 a pound.

The shipment goes out at 4:30 every afternoon via airfreight. The chanterelles will be in the chefs’ hands at 10 the next morning.

During his early years of picking mushrooms, Williams confesses, “I would only eat the ones Shirley or John had approved.” He made a wise decision, since many mushrooms are highly poisonous. Chanterelles have a poisonous look-a-like called Jack 0’Lantern, but Shirley says, unlike chanterelles, it fruits in the fall and not in the South. Extreme caution should always be used in eating wild mushrooms. Take along an expert until you are confident you can distinguish the varieties, Shirley suggests.

She shares her knowledge of chanterelles—the scientific name is Craterellus odoratus—speaking to garden clubs in greater New Orleans, and participating in forays with members of the Gulf States Mycological Society. On a walk through her property the group “found a mushroom that had not been seen since 1924,” she says, with evident pride. “It’s going to be written up.”