Michigan morel festivals for 2009, and how to find morels

My search logs are starting to show hits for morel season, so it's time to put this year's post together.  The early reports from the morel progression sightings map show a few isolated dots in southern Michigan, as of April 22 2009, but typically May is morel month, when and where the May apples are in good form.

Here's a list of some morel festivals in the state; if I have missed any, please let me know so that next year's list can be better.

Make your plans for May 8th –10th, 2009 for our “Golden Anniversary”  50th Annual Mesick Mushroom Festival.  Mesick is on M-115 NW of Cadillac; they helpfully sell "spore bags" to pickers so that when you go out in the woods looking for morels you can seed new crops for future years.

49th Annual National Morel Mushroom Festival: Boyne City, Michigan May 14 through 17 2009  Brochure (pdf), and the site has the song, the Mushroomer's Waltz (mp3), which tells you precisely what sorts of locations are good to go picking.

The University of Michigan Press has a book - How to Find Morels, by Milan Pelouch, recipes by Lila Pelouch - which tells all:

While many morel fans remain tight lipped about their favorite subject, in How to Find Morels author Milan Pelouch freely shares everything he's learned during his years of morel hunting. The book covers all aspects of finding and eating morels: identification of true and false morels; what to wear (and not to wear) and take with you on mushroom hunts; when to search for morels; the best places to look for them; cleaning and preservation methods; and, of course, delicious recipes using morels in dozens of different dishes, from soups to entrées. Although the author's preferred hunting area is northern Michigan, his tips can be used in any location in the United States.

If you want Scientific Research to go with your morels, see doi:10.1007/BF02858213, a touching account from a Harvard lad fresh to the Michigan woods published as Morchellamania in Michigan, Economic Botany, Volume 33, Number 1 / January, 1979.

Any day you can go for a walk in the woods is a good day!

Comments

[Vivienne Armentrout]

We hunted for morels today in a nearby woods. No luck, but we took a class from Ellen Elliott Weatherbee, who instructed us that "the mushroom god decides". Humility is important in this enterprise.

[Edward Vielmetti]

Just being out in the woods is enough to make you lucky. What other things did you see when you were there?

[Ben Hyde]

I had high hopes that there would be good morel info in google books, but not so much. found this though http://books.google.com/books?id=M-oCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA64

[Vivienne Armentrout]

I think I may have seen a small skunk cabbage, but unfortunately our little Sunset-Brooks area still is very high in invasives. The prettiest thing I saw was a patch of Scilla (non-native). The mayapple hint is a good one. I love their peltate leaves, anyway, so a good thing to hunt for.

[Edward Vielmetti]

Absolute Michigan's annual morel post is up:

http://www.absolutemichigan.com/dig/michigan/m-is-for-monday-and-midwest-mcs-michigan-agriculture-and-morels/

noting a collection of recipes from Traverse City including Morel Mushroom Cream Sauce With Pasta. (mmm)

[Dinah]

No tramping in the woods for us today, but Joe & I did have simply amazing morels in the salad on the great $22 prix fixe lunch menu at Blackbird in Chicago. Best I've ever had!

[mom]

Up here in the north we're still seeing forsythia and daffodils. No leaves are out yet. In our woods we spotted several false morels...but we DO NOT eat them! Hoping for some warm rain to spur the real morels into action. Yesterday it was cold enough for some snow showers! Today the sun is shining.