Morel pickers trickle into the South Slave
Mushroom interest moderate but flora,
fauna still draw visitors to Fort Providence
April Hudson
Northern News Services
Thursday, June 9, 2016
DEH GAH GOT'IE KOE/FORT PROVIDENCE
The morel mushroom season is under way in Fort Providence, although the community has yet to see the droves of pickers who came through last year.
Drying racks are lined up behind the cabins after a day of picking. - photos courtesy of Captain's Cabins and Bridge-less Lodging
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So far, the season has been low-key, with fewer than 100 pickers coming through the hamlet - compared to last year which saw hundreds camping outside Fort Providence and Kakisa.
Deh Gah Got'ie First Nation Chief Joachim Bonnetrouge said on June 6 there had been a few pickers camping for the past week. The band issued a public notice for mushroom pickers with four points to follow, including reporting in to the Deh Gah Got'ie First Nation office and signing in with contact information, a measure for their own personal safety.
Other points include a requirement to make an offering to the land, packing out all personal garbage and not disturbing any wildlife, water sources or plant life.
"We just need to say to visitors, 'Please look after the land,' " Bonnetrouge said.
Although the season has been lackluster compared to 2014 and 2015, the influx of pickers is still a boon for local businesses. Gina Brown-Mikula, who runs Captain's Cabins and Bridge-less Lodging with her husband, Johnny, said their business has already had three pickers from Nova Scotia stay with them. Those pickers set up drying racks in the grass behind the cabins to dry their morels.
"We were worried about the soot but (we've had) no problem," said Brown-Mikula.
The cabins, south of the Deh Cho Bridge, were a hot spot for pickers last year. The cabins are also in a good location for wildlife-watching - one of the main draws for Nelson Penner, a chef for Blomidon Inn in Wolfville, N.S.
Penner recently stayed at the cabins with his wife and brother, who came from Kentucky to join him in picking morels.
"We just came up here for a week. We came because we haven't been up North before - we wanted to see bison, bears and morels, all of which we've seen lots of," Penner said.
"My brother is an avid birder as well, and has seen three birds he'd never seen before."
During their stay, the group saw 50 to 60 other pickers in the area, he added.
Penner said he often forages for wild mushrooms back at home in Nova Scotia, although this is his first time going after morels.
The group picked their way through a two-year burn from 2014, which lay about 60 kilometres out of Fort Providence.
"I want to use these at the restaurant where I work," he said.
The picking season in Fort Providence opens on the heels of a June 3 report from ecology consultant Joachim Obst, who worked with the GNWT in 2015 to offer morel workshops in the territory.
Those workshops saw a total of 1,700 Northern residents and 300 visitors attend the workshops.
That report describes the stretch of Highway 3 between Fort Providence and Behchoko as the hotbed of activity in 2015, with three B.C. mushroom buyers, two Northwest Territories buyers, 30 to 35 Northern entrepreneurs and between 500 and 600 people harvesting morels each day.
The price for morels was between $6 and $7 per pound, half of what it had been in 2014.
Obst's report puts the harvest of dried morels in 2015 at 40,000 pounds or 20 tons.
