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KHOMUTYNSI, Ukraine — Valery Kravchuk, a seasoned mushroom hunter, pushed apart some useless leaves to disclose his prize: a lovely blusher, so referred to as as a result of it turns pink when pinched.
“Mushrooms are like magnets for me,” he stated. “I really feel them.”
This fall, Ukrainians have been driving their automobiles down nation roads, getting out and strolling deep into the forest for the world’s most socially distanced pastime: mushroom looking.
By serendipity, the nation had a bumper crop of mushrooms in a yr when gathering them stays one of many few actions for these eager to get out of the home whereas avoiding different folks.
Ukrainian biologists chalked up the bounty this fall to a dry summer time adopted by an unusually heat fall and late first frost, coming solely on the finish of November.
“All of the mushrooms which had been imagined to develop beginning in July needed to match right into a month and a half this autumn,” stated Zinaida Kosynska, a mycologist and creator of Ukrainian mushroom guidebooks.
“It’s been superb,” stated Emilia Koleda, knowledgeable mushroom hunter who sells her finds on the shoulder of a freeway exterior Kyiv, the capital.
She stood beside seven buckets of boletus mushrooms, a late season delicacy that she stated she scooped up throughout only a single forest tour. In previous years, three buckets made for an excellent day.
The mushroom bonanza has been a fortunate break in a poor nation, the place mushrooms are a staple for some households, whereas others complement their earnings by selecting for the market.
Ms. Koleda stated there have been no different potentialities to earn cash due to lockdowns. Together with her earnings, she purchased firewood for winter heating and all the things her grandchildren wanted for college.
“Mushrooms saved so many individuals this yr,” she stated. “Nature helped us by the quarantine.”
In Ukraine, a line of automobiles parked on the roadside in the midst of nowhere is a telltale signal that hunters are about, strolling quietly among the many bushes, carrying small mushroom harvesting knives.
“It’s my method to be in nature,” stated Andriy Hrybovskyi, whose final identify interprets as “mushroom,” an indication of the exercise’s deep roots in Ukraine. He is aware of a number of spots in a forest he can go to after work, to breathe recent air and discover dinner.
Information of the websites within the forest the place mushrooms develop is the foreign money of mushroom hunters, each skilled and newbie, and that information is a intently guarded secret.
When requested for recommendation on places, the etiquette for a well mannered Ukrainian mushroom hunter is to explain some phony spots, in order to not seem impolite, whereas in reality by no means revealing the place the mushrooms actually are. Ukrainians who’ve taken to tagging spots on Google maps are seen as spoilers of this custom.
Many Ukrainian households appoint a delegated taster, normally somebody deeply versed within the varied species who is aware of which to keep away from. The taster will pattern the harvest a day earlier than all people else, simply in case. It’s a grim custom, however essential.
Viktoria Ganzha, from Poltava in jap Ukraine, who tastes for her household, has been busy this yr. She described the position as that of a sapper, the primary to enter a minefield. “I’m the de-miner,” she stated.
The Ukrainian authorities has reported a rise in poisonings this yr, the unhappy draw back of the mushroom bounty. By mid-November, 289 folks had been poisoned and 11 had died, the federal government stated.
The authorities intently monitor one other hazard in Ukraine, radioactive mushrooms picked within the area surrounding Chernobyl. Harvesting within the space is against the law, however the mushrooms popping up within the Chernobyl zone this fall have fascinated Ukrainians over anecdotal accounts that they’re unnaturally massive, becoming the stereotype of radiation’s results on high of an already good mushroom yr.
The police arrested one group of males smuggling 120 kilos of mushrooms from the Chernobyl zone.
Skilled pickers this yr are additionally discovering an abundance of the widespread toadstool.
Viktor Klimov, knowledgeable picker within the pine forests in northern Ukraine, specializes within the toadstool. The cartoonish, red-and-white polka-dot mushrooms are toxic however seen to have medicinal qualities in tiny doses, together with bolstering the immune system. Dried toadstools are in demand.
“I’ve by no means seen so many toadstools in my whole life,” Mr. Klimov stated of this yr’s mushroom season.
The pine forests the place Mr. Klimov works are overgrown with moss, making hunters’ steps silent. Out on this forest, each spoken phrase seems like against the law. Hunters communicate solely in a whisper.
Mushrooms like heat and wet climate, however not an excessive amount of of both. They want stability — and that is precisely the sensation that those that choose them are searching for, too, notably on this unstable yr.
Mr. Kravchuk, who was looking this month for blushers, drives slowly on the muddy, barely satisfactory highway resulting in his spot — a grove of 100-year-old oaks between farm fields — believing the mushrooms like a peaceful ambiance.
However whereas he loves to select them, Mr. Kravchuk doesn’t get pleasure from consuming them.
When he returned residence, he nibbled a number of as a precaution, after which set them apart for his household to pickle or fry with potatoes and onions.
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