Hello folks,
A quick introduction:
My interest in truffles came through my interest in other fungi. In the upper Midwest I enjoy foraging for morels, chanterelles, various boletes, and black trumpets; I also enjoy making forays to find and try to identify whatever fungi are fruiting. As I learned more about various fungi I (of course) became intrigued by truffles, which seemed exotic and thousands of miles out of reach.
Then, in the depth of a northern Minnesota winter, I read a copy of the 1903 journal article that first described and named Tuber lyonii, which we commonly know as the pecan truffle. The type specimen was found in Minnesota.
Game on!
This spring I got a German wirehaired pointer puppy, “Mo,” to complement my geriatric German shorthair. My plan all along had been to train this puppy to scent hunt black trumpets. Trumpets will be my target during this course, and weather permitting I should be able to put Mo on plenty of wild trumpets in the second half of the summer. This summer and fall, I plan to do as much searching as I can for native truffles in Minnesota and Wisconsin. With persistence and luck, I hope to identify productive areas that I could then return to in 2016–after having spent some time adapting Mo’s above-ground scent work to hypogynous fungi.
I look forward to “meeting” my classmates and learning from all of you.
Curt