Foraging Mushrooms in Autumnal Northern Sweden

Autumn in the forest feels like nature's final burst of energy. A time when the forest floor comes alive with mushrooms, just waiting to be foraged and prepared into a cozy meal. This is my favourite time of year, so come along and let's go foraging in the old pine woods. My fascination with mushrooms started a long time ago. I used to make photoshop edits of little mushroom houses, and now I've learnt how to forage them. Mushrooms are amazing. Their role is to break down organic material, adding nutrients to the soil. Mushrooms have amazing mycelium networks in the soil. The mushroom is just the fruiting body, and provides a nutritious meal to wildlife. But when animals pick them up, spores get dispersed, helping fungi colonise. Nature always has a plan. Today we've come to the forest to look for cantarelle mushrooms, which are the yellow mushrooms. They're really easy to identify, and hopefully we can find some. So we've just found this species of mushroom, and it's a bit tricky to identify until you see the bottom of it, and it has all these like lines coming out. And for a moment I thought this was the same, and from the top it does look like it, but it actually has a very different base, and this one almost looks like lots of little teeth sticking out. Today I'm foraging with my neighbours Anders and Simsa, who are experienced with mushroom identification. It's been a lot of moose walking around here. Okay. A lot of old friends. Yeah. Are these ones also okay? Is this a young one? Is this a young one? They're very good. Yeah? Okay. This one's the same? Same. There's something quite charming about going into the forest in a knitted jumper, with a straw basket, and going foraging. So we've just been collecting another species of cantarelle, which is this one. This one's called the trumpet cantarelle, and there are so many in this area. Mosquitoes. I've literally just found like 200 of these just behind me. There are so many in this spot. Look at the length of that one. Look at all of these. Everywhere. And here. Oh my gosh, there's more here. I take it back. I think there's like 300. If you want to learn how to forage mushrooms, I highly recommend going with someone who knows what they're doing. That's how I learnt, and I'm still learning. I won't pick anything up I'm not sure about. Something very fascinating that happened last year with Roo, is that we actually watched her caching mushrooms, and she would put them on a certain branch, and that was basically to dry them out so that she could find them again. And it's just amazing that they know how to do this without being taught. They just know how to collect mushrooms, how to cache them and dry them so that they can find them in the winter. Chanterelle mushrooms are a forager's delight. There are actually many chanterelle species, and each has their unique taste. The trumpet chanterelle has an earthy flavour, and the sweet tooth mushroom that I found earlier has a nutty taste. Smile, you're on camera. He's smiling. I thought I was doing well. You have so many. And you clean up. Yeah, look, I'm cleaning. You have to be very careful where you put your feet now. Why? Because it's so much... Water? No, but it's so much mushroom here. I know. Yeah, I accidentally stepped on some just now. I think we've collected probably 20 kilograms worth of mushrooms, and apparently this is an exceptional year for this species of chanterelle. We didn't walk far at all, and there's just hundreds everywhere. My basket is full. I almost can't collect more. There's still plenty around, but I think we're going to go now. Look, mushrooms. Hi, and welcome to Calendar HQ. I am currently packing orders. I just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who has ordered a calendar. Views on a YouTube video are quite difficult to picture, and when I'm packing orders, and I'm seeing your names, and I'm seeing all the different countries that my calendars go to, then it really hits, and I'm very grateful. One of the reasons I'm able to call this my job is thanks to you, of course, but also thanks to sponsors, and I'd like to thank Squarespace for sponsoring this video. So the first year I had my calendar business, I did everything manually. It was very time-consuming. Before Squarespace even approached me, I made a Squarespace website, and the orders would come in automatically, and then on Squarespace, I connected it to the shipping company, and automatically I can get labels, and honestly, it saved me so much time. My favourite thing about Squarespace is the app. I can go onto the app, I can see how many orders I've received that day, I can see my revenue from now four years, and that really helps me predict how many calendars I need to invest in. I can even update the products page on the go, and I can even create a discount. Let's make a little discount code, Mushroom10. If you're interested in giving Squarespace a go, you can head to squarespace.com slash DannyConnorWild, and you can save 10% off a new purchase of a domain or a website, and a massive thank you to everyone who has ordered. Back to foraging. So we have been here three hours. It didn't feel like three hours. That was just mine, yeah. Blueberry and lingonberry. Yeah. Cocosaken. From coconut. Coconut sugar. Wow, yeah. Thank you. After a very successful forage and lunch, we started to head back, but soon got distracted by more beautiful mushrooms. Oh wow, amazing. So big. This is the most perfect amanita I've ever seen, and I so wish it was in the squirrel forest. Since the mycelium networks live in the soil, you can usually find mushrooms in the same place each year, so we knew where to find more chanterelle. Most of these I will freeze and eat during winter, but tonight I cook some and put them on pizza. Can you see it? This is the secret entrance. Welcome to the squirrel forest. The squirrel forest is a little haven for the red squirrels. It's an old forest. It was a plantation, but it's now full of dead wood and mushrooms. The trees are old and produce lots of cones. It's small, but it's the squirrel's secret safe place, and it will soon be theirs forever. I've come to the squirrel forest this morning, and I'm hoping to see a squirrel called Buddy, who I have been following pretty closely for two years now, and I call him my star squirrel because he is amazing. He knows my whistle. As soon as I whistle, he comes within about 10 minutes. He knows my camera traps, so if I have a setup, he's almost always there, and he works out what photo I want, and he poses perfectly. Oh, squirrel. Who is it? I couldn't recognize this female, but she definitely knows me. When the squirrels change from their winter to summer coats, I often lose track of who is who. I waited longer to see if Buddy would show up, but he didn't on this day. I'm very excited to share that I have finally agreed on a final price with the owner of the squirrel forest. It's taken a long time, but I soon will be sharing the crowd funder. So I recently found this book in Stockholm. It's about fantastical animals and the stories behind them, and I discovered that there's a red squirrel from old Norse folklore. I'm looking forward to cozy season. There's a certain magic when dark skies and the cold returns. I've always loved autumn. Not for the fancy pumpkin drinks, but because of this amazing slow change in the natural world. The red squirrels are busy eating. They'll gain 30% of their body weight to survive winter. They are also collecting food and caching it. And the forest is full of mysterious mushrooms. This is nature's last burst of energy and color before the sleep of winter. And for some species, it's the mating season like the red deer rut. But soon this will be covered in white for the next six months, at least here in northern Sweden. But before winter really kicks in, go outside and enjoy autumn.