Now Tim you are getting into a stage of what professional harvesters do. When you get to the point where these become “blind hides” you are going to want to carry “markers” of some kind with you.
We use ribbon tape tied on metal washers and hazard flags. You can use anything, but these are visible and allow you to mark areas of interest, or truffle locations. You’ll want to think about what you want to use. I should have taken pictures from last week of my Kit, ohwell.
Here is a photo of a harvester in Australia. All those ribbons are tied to washers. He throws one out on a spot the dog alerts on so he (or someone) can harvest later.
Some of what you do is going to depend on the size of your orchard as well. I personally will tag things differently if I am working on a 600 tree orchard vs a 4,500 tree orchard. 4,500 orchard we want to be able to see the tree from far away so in addition to ground markers where we find truffles, I ribbon the top of the tree.
Here is a photo of Stuart on one of the productive farms in Tennessee. Each of those flags represents a truffle find from previous (or this) year
Eventually You’ll want to practice with Molly likely going from tree to tree as well- but again, this is going to depend a bit on the size of your orchard.
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Video
OK, so we’re going to talk to Paul, but your next step while doing this (and again we cover it in Lvl 3 is you’ll want to start working with Molly on naked truffles. You’ll want to know how she interacts with them so you can work on various skills. She’s so excited! She may respond a bit differently to a whole truffle unprotected. You’ll want to see what that looks like.
You guys are so fun to watch!
The video looks good, no complaints or concerns really. You are incredibly good at reading her and waiting for a more pronounced alert. She certainly has a zippy style 😉 and yes that is very dry, but well done Molly. With enough Time Molly can find it. How is the soil on the orchard?