Mushroom pickers back in business.

Byline: Jim Feehan The Register-Guard

COTTAGE GROVE - Robert Close of Creswell scooped a handful of golden chanterelles from a plastic tote Sunday and blasted them with an air hose, removing pine needles and dirt from pickers' bounty at a mushroom buying station.

Close's wife, Joyce Koehn, is the namesake of Joyce Table Mushrooms, located about a mile south of Cottage Grove High School on Highway 99. The couple said they expect business to bloom now that mushroom pickers can ply their trade on national forest land.

Early this month, the U.S. Forest Service stopped issuing permits for mushroom picking and Christmas tree harvesting on its acreage nationwide. But a California judge cleared the way last week for a return to normal for commercial collectors and hobbyists who roam the forest in search of chanterelles, morels and shiitakes.

The judge's ruling "is a wonderful thing," said Koehn. "The earlier Forest Service edict was a real blow to people who love to be outdoors and the elderly who supplement their income by picking mushrooms."

Clarifying an earlier ruling, U.S. District Judge James Singleton Jr. wrote Oct. 19 that the Forest Service needs to take public comments and consider appeals only on major projects, such as timber sales and prescribed burns. The agency does not need to follow such an elaborate process for permits for hunting guides or mushroom gatherers, the judge said.

The ruling was good news to Jerry Sales of Cottage Grove, who unloaded about 150 pounds of golden chanterelles at a second mushroom buying station in downtown Cottage Grove Sunday afternoon. Sales said he and his nephew, Justin Sales, spent eight hours scouring the hills east of Crow.

While his harvest was on private land, Sales said he's still happy with the ruling.

"Later this year, I plan to go to the Siuslaw and Willamette national forests. So obviously, I'm pleased," he said.

Asked how he likes his mushrooms, Sales replied: "I don't eat them. I'm just here for the money."

But Karl Hagewood of Cottage Grove, one of Koehn's first customers, is a fan.

Hagewood spent the better part of the day picking chanterelles on private land east of Cottage Grove Lake.

"They're good to eat. I like to have mine with a little steak. It's gourmet food for the poor man," he said.

In a bountiful domestic market overrun by chanterelles from Washington and British Columbia, prices have been low, said Koehn, who's been in the mushroom business for nine years.

On Sunday, she was offering $1 a pound for golden chanterelles that she will in turn sell to a mushroom broker in Eugene.

Koehn's daughter, Jessica, began picking six years ago at age 10.

Since then they've picked mushrooms in at least five Western states.

"It's a good family activity, camping and mushroom picking," said Koehn.

In their travels, they've seen Indians spear fishing in the Salmon River in Idaho, and ventured from Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming to the North Cascades National Park in Washington.

"If it weren't for mushrooms, we wouldn't see parts of America," she said.

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Jerry Sales unloads chanterelle mushrooms Sunday at a Cottage Grove buying station. reporter stands by his spelling slr