Trifling with Truffles or There’s Fungus Among Us in the Valley…

Two or three months ago I noticed a flutter of pink along the lower Loop Road and sent the Ripple to investigate this new Valley pretty. In a stretch of field behind Kelly Bolles’ Organic Farms the ground was plowed and staked. (Kelly’s house? You can’t miss this edifice—the old Baylor place: it’s the elevated house that’s in the stage of becoming…and becoming…and becoming… but that’s a whole other post.) Every five or six feet there was a stake flagged with hot pink surveyor’s tape, row after row of them. Some sort of woody twig sprouted alongside each. Whatever the new planting was, I’m familiar enough with the Valley berry industry to know the leafless stalks were not berry plants. “Now what’s all this about?” I wondered and made a mental note to interrogate Kelly when next our paths crossed. 

But before Kelly, I encountered Paul Bischoff. He was transplanting garlic on the lower Loop Road the other day. I was sure he would know the story behind the fluttering pink flags. “Looks like more posting material for the Ripple,” I say. When Paul heard I was there on behalf of the press, he hemmed and hawed, turned rather evasive, as if a team from “60 Minutes” had suddenly shown up with their camera crew and were about to shove a microphone into his face. All Paul would disclose was the staked field was Kelly’s leap of faith into exotic agriculture and that the newly set twigs were hazelnut trees. Paul would rather I talk to Kelly about the particulars. So that evening I dial up Bolles’ Organic Farm and after listening to a pitch for “raw honey and assorted jams,” I was told to leave a message. “This is the Ripple calling,” I tell the voice. “What’s up with your flagged field? Might make an interesting post. Give me a call,” and left it at that.

Nearly a month passed. No call from Kelly. The Ripple is nothing if not persistent. A secret in the Valley? I’ll have it out or bust. And the other day as Gladys and I glide by the lofty old renovation, there’s Kelly Bolles himself puttering about. We cruise into his driveway and rattle to a stop. “So you don’t want to talk about your latest agricultural venture, what you have at stake?” I ask, trying to sound more diplomatic than accusatory. I mention the unanswered phone message. Kelly informs me I most likely had dialed a number and left a message on a machine he doesn’t check for sometimes two weeks at a time when it’s not marketing season. He had not heard my message.

Kelly at first appeared reluctant to talk about his innovative enterprise—a fear about crop plundering, I gather—but I reassure him, “Hey, it’s not like you’re planting the field in watermelons, now is it?”He shakes his head and laughs. Once he starts talking, Kelly rides the wave of his enthusiasm and the information pours forth. Some time ago he learned the Pacific Northwest has its own truffle industry. Truffles? Yes, truffles, exotic fungi, the mushroom equivalent of caviar. Fancy French fare. “Truffles?” Kelly’s dad remarked when he heard of his son’s latest brainchild. “I thought those things grew only in France!”Yes, the gold standard of mycology has come to the Valley. Kelly did some research on truffle production in Oregon, our southern neighbor that apparently is in the vanguard of the industry on the west coast. “Truffle growers even have their own annual conventions,” Kelly exclaims. I asked him if he had attended any or had plans to. “No,” he says. “I think they’d be pretty pricey to attend.” His research has included videos on truffle production and harvesting, and he has been in contact with one of the Oregon growers, from whom he’s gleaned not only advice, but also the capital outlay for a truffle crop right here along the Lower Loop Road.

So this is what I learn. Truffles are a fungus symbiotic with oak and hazelnut trees. (I knew our northwest morels had an affinity for cottonwoods.) Kelly purchased 400 seedling trees from his Oregon contact at $12.50 per tree. Although most are hazelnut trees—preferable because the hazelnut grows faster than oak—there were not enough for a 400 count, so the balance was filled by the slower growing oak trees. Because truffles thrive in alkaline soil, Kelly had to add thirty tons of lime to the two acres to adjust the soil’s PH.  (Because of our considerable rainfall, Valley soil tends to be acidic; good for berries, bad for truffles.) And the yearling trees? They have all been truffled with, inoculated with Black Perigord truffle mycelium.

Twelve thousand dollars later Kelly has himself a potential nut and truffle farm, although he’s not quite sure how he’s going to market all the nutty by-product. He has high hopes for the results. In gourmet food circles truffles can command a price of $2,200 a pound. Truffle oil yields an even greater premium. Truffles grow in the soil surrounding the tree’s root system and a soil temperature of at least 85 degrees is necessary for the spores to fruit. Kelly hopes our unpredictable summers will produce enough heat to set his truffle crop. From berries to truffles—quite a leap of faith, it seems to me.

Anyone who knows a thing about French truffle production is familiar with the time honored method of harvest: truffle gatherers tag along through the countryside in the company of pigs. When Porky starts rooting around the base of an oak tree, harvesters quickly intervene to keep their porcine pals from pigging out on the valuable black nuggets. I ask Kelly which harvesting technique he plans to use and am surprised he hasn’t really thought this through yet. I tell him Jason Dean down on Ben Howard has a half dozen pigs. Maybe Kelly the truffle farmer could team with JD the pig farmer, a little symbiosis of their own. Kelly laughs and shares that in a video he watched, the truffle hunter used a dog, a small one, Jack Russell terrier size, to locate the underground prizes. Hogs have an innate sense of smell that allows them to home in on the mushroom morsels. Dogs have to be be trained to seek them out. I share a story about a dog’s keen sense of smell with Kelly, tell him about the time a drug sniffing dog was paraded down the halls of Snohomish High School. Suddenly the dog became frantic in front of a certain locker door. The principal was summoned, a key obtained, and the locker opened where a potted hyacinth in full bloom was discovered. A horticulture student had cultivated it and brought the plant to her locker before carrying it home with her that day after school.

And it’s the training that makes the canine hunter more suitable for the task; you might train a pig to dance, but where a lusty meal is concerned…well, a pig is inclined to be a pig after all.  It takes some creative thought to make a small farm profitable in these modern times. Innovation and diversity are keys to success. I admire Kelly’s courage to try something new in the Valley. I hope his two acre experiment yields him a mycelium miracle and that the whole venture doesn’t end up being just plain nutty.

As far as anyone moonlighting for mushrooms—Kelly has nothing to fear from me. A $2,200 mushroom would be utterly wasted on my stultified epicurean taste buds. My hedonistic tendencies might extend to the rare portobello or a shitake, but a tin of button mushrooms suits this gourmand just fine. Besides I don’t think the cat would be much help rooting out truffle beds. On the other hand, a two acre field of watermelons? A cold slice of melon, juicy and dripping red on a hot summer’s day? Yeah, a watermelon patch…that could pose some real problems for Farmer Bolles.

Grammy...Or Charlie?...

It's hard to believe Kelly Bolles' great horticultural experiment, trifling with truffles, (Trifling for Truffles or there's a Fungus Among us in the Valley), is now in its eighth year. I think about his project and those exotic 'shrooms every time Gladys and I huff and puff our way past the oak and hazelnut grove especially planted to foster a crop of the gourmet fungi. Five years, Kelly told me, the earliest he could expect any sort of crop. "If I could just find a truffle like this, " Kelly grinned, configuring his fingers in the shape of a softball, "I'd have it made." Or something to that effect, in other words a gourmet gold nugget....

Whenever I see Kelly these days, I ask for an update. As of this post the Valley's sometime truffle king has yet to unearth a single gnarly corm. I'm no expert on truffle horticulture, certainly haven't done the research Kelly has on the crop, which he geared to the Pacific Northwest truffle industry that's well established in Oregon. My knowledge of the elusive fungi is limited to European truffles, a subject that crops up every so often in the news. For centuries in truffle country, especially France, truffle foragers have used the keen olfactory ability of pigs to locate and root out the treasured mushrooms. In keeping with Old Country tradition, come potential harvest time, Bolles purchased a pair of porcine truffle seekers, but I wonder if Kelly's new help might have put his fungal venture in jeopardy.

Here's where the Valley truffle adventure becomes more interesting. Pigs love truffles just as much as the French gourmand. Once a truffle hog roots up a prize, the pig's handler must pounce on the find immediately before his assistant can scarf it down. I'm sure Kelly was aware a truffle sniffer could and would down the crop if the handler didn't quickly intervene. Perhaps Kelly's research focused on the growing of truffles more than the harvesting of them. Not sure about that, but after the fact, when the pigs were hired on, Bolles learned that a potential truffle hunter has to be trained in the art, training that should begin at the piglet age. Kelly's two pigs? Both mature hogs. And apparently you can't teach an old hog new tricks.

You might say the pocine pair are now a Valley fixture, and as you drive the Lower Loop Road south of Werkhoven corner and happen to see afield what appear to be two large dogs in the vicinity of Kelly's truffle grove, those'd be Grammy and Charlie. I caught them unaware the other day and thought I'd snap a photo, but when I approached, Grammy...or Charlie was having none of it, snorted and waddled briskly off, presenting only his or her porkly backside to the camera.

"How are Grammy and Charlie these days?" I asked Kelly last fall when our paths crossed.  It was flood season and he was worried about them. "They weigh nearly four hundred pounds apiece," he told me. "If we have a flood, I can't pick 'em up...they'll drown. I need to build a critter pad so they can escape should it flood." He has yet to build a higher ground refuge but as it's not flood season, I don't think mounding a pig escape is Kelly's priority.

When I mentioned bacon, pork chops, and cracklin's, Kelly laughed and shook his head. As we pet owners know, naming an animal elevates its status to that of pet, and it appears Grammy and Charlie are now part of the Bolles's household, not likely to become pulled pork or pan fried side meat. But Kelly's always looking for an angle: "Maybe I should train and sell truffle dogs," he chuckled,  "There's real money in that..." as a trained truffle dog has little interest in downing a pricey mushroom. While he's sharing this with me, I'm thinking about Grammy and Charlie, the way they've bulked up, and how I frequently see them rooting about in the truffle grove. Perhaps they're finding more there than cover and shade?

Meanwhile when fall rolls around, Kelly has hazelnuts for sale and even extends the courtesy of a stock tank in which one can dunk his hazelnuts to see which sink or float (the floaters contain no meat). I'll close this post by sharing a question I put to Kelly one day: "How can you tell which is Grammy and which is Charlie; their markings are the same?" "Charlie has tusks," he said,... good information to have the next time I get close enough to snap another photo.

If I Had a Hammer…

I heard a rumor the other day, a rumor that grew out of fact: the fact being Kelly Bolles had a “For Sale” sign on his green pickup truck. Those who frequent the Valley recognize Kelly’s truck, usually with trailer in tow, as a Valley regular. More often than not both vehicles pass me when I’m afoot or cruising along on Gladys. When I saw the truck parked roadside of the fruit stand at the corner of Tualco with a “For Sale” sign conspicuously displayed on a window, I thought I’d ask Michael at Tropical Blends Espresso if he knew what was going on. “Yeah,” I’m told, “Kelly’s going to North Dakota.” “What’s up with that?” I asked. “I don’t know…guess he’s going there to drive truck.” The Ripple, of course, does not give voice to rumor, so I set out to learn more.

Just the next day I was wheeling by Kelly’s perpetual renovation high rise and there was his truck, trailer attached, and Kelly himself hauling stuff from his airy basement to the trailer. Here’s the opportunity to do some rumor busting, I thought, and headed up Kelly’s driveway toward the truth.

I wait until the Truffle King reappears from his vaulted basement carrying the odds and ends to be trailered away. “So you’re selling the truck?” I ask, pointing to the sign on the canopy window. “Yes,” Kelly replies. “I have an apartment rented in North Dakota and need to raise the money to travel there.” “It’s difficult to spread the word when you’re still using the rig, isn’t it?”I joke. Kelly laughs and says he needed to haul some stuff, do a little cleaning up around the place. I laugh,“I guess you do get a wider audience driving around the area than you would leaving it parked on the corner.” So the rumor is true: Kelly Bolles is off to North Dakota. “I have to do something,” he says and nods towards the lofty house. “It’s pretty much tapped me out.” I’ve discussed Kelly’s perpetual renovation with him before, learned the remodel and proprietor are caught up in an inescapable snare. As is the case with many serious home upgrades, the homeowner does one project at a time and then waits for the bank account to recover before he tackles the next. Just when Kelly has set aside the money to move forward, his County permits expire or the codes change and he has to use his reserves to acquire new permits. Kelly’s household seems mired in the classic Catch-22 conundrum.

“So are you selling out, then?” I asked, thinking about the mycological experiment Kelly began last spring (“Trifling with Truffles or There’s Fungus Among Us in the Valley,” 5/29/2011). Kelly shakes his head. “Who’ll be watching after the berries—and those truffles?” I learn Paul Bischoff will be superintending the place while Kelly browses the greener pastures of North Dakota. Besides, the first truffle is three years distant. Why North Dakota, I wonder. “There’s plenty of work there,” Kelly’s replies. I guess “work” means driving truck. I don’t know if I could tolerate those harsh North Dakota winters myself and share my concern with Kelly. As so often happens in idle conversation, at this point the topics leapfrog, turn random. “Mexico,” laughs Kelly. “I wouldn’t go there for anything,”referencing the drug cartels that have turned many areas of siesta land into war zones. My rebuttal surprises Kelly. “Alaska,” I reply. “Wouldn’t want to go there.” That puzzles him and he wants to know why. “Bears,” I tell him, “I’m afraid of the bears.” He replies, “Bears?…I’m more afraid of the Rottweilers and German Shepherds I meet than bears.” He has a point. If you’ve read The Ripple, you know I’ve posted a few Valley dog stories myself. But I’m always up for another good dog story—especially if I’m not personally involved in the storyline. At this point we leave North Dakota, Mexico and Alaska for the geography class, and courtesy of Kelly’s caninophobia I’ll share this story he told me.    

One of Kelly’s contractors in the perpetual renovation loop was a cement finisher. Noting that Kelly’s farm had plenty of open space, the contractor asked him if he could bring his dog to work with him during the day while he went about his work. “What kind of a dog is it?” Kelly asked cautiously. A mastiff was the answer. Now a mastiff is no small animal and right away Kelly was apprehensive. “Is it friendly…like people?” The answer predictably was “yes,”(Have you ever met a dog owner whose dog wasn’t?) “Does it like cats?” Kelly asked, thinking of the numerous felines that call Bolles’ Organic Farms their home. “Oh, he kills cats,” was the candid answer. Now as far as I’m concerned, that should have been a red flag, but Kelly Bolles is the easiest going type of character you’ll ever meet and after some hesitation gave the cement man permission, stipulating, “Ok, but you’ll have to keep him tied up then.” 

So to work the mastiff came and spent the days tethered to his master’s truck by a stout rope. Then came a day when the contractor decided he was going to knock off and head to town for lunch. Perhaps he didn’t want to share his meal with the mastiff--I not sure--but riddle me this: how many Happy Meals could a mastiff put away? Whatever his reason, the contractor re-tethered the dog, left it behind, and drove off to seek his lunch.

I’ll take a break from the story myself in order to relate some mastiff facts guaranteed to add more punch to Kelly’s story. When I think of “mastiff,” the word immediately associates with “massive.”A pack of chihuahuas could loll comfortably in the shade of one mastiff—if each weren’t afraid of becoming a doggie snack. Although there are different varieties of mastiff, the English mastiff is touted as being “the world’s largest dog.” Bred to be a guard dog, (the Romans called the mastiff a “war dog”), this canine behemoth has a set of jaws that could crush a Smart Car. Come to think of it, I wonder if Kelly asked the cement guy just how his dog “liked” people….

While the mastiff’s master was in town sampling the local fast food fare, Kelly had some visitors. Dog people, too, it turned out. The visitors exited their vehicle and brought their dog with them. The visitors’ breed of choice, according to Kelly, was a whippet style dog. If you’re not up on your dog breeds or a fancier of dog racing, the whippet is a medium-sized dog, a smaller version of the greyhound, and like the larger dog, genetically engineered for speed, especially bred to run things down, not grind them up. The shorthaired whippet’s streamlined body is held aloft by small-boned, ballerina type legs. Apparently, too, the visiting whippet had an amiable nature, and spotting its mountain-sized cousin tethered nearby, sauntered over for a friendly “Howja do.” The mastiff responded to the offer of friendship by grabbing a mouthful of whippet, chomping down hard, and locking its jaws on the unfortunate well-wisher. Yips and howls of distress quickly brought Kelly and the whippet’s masters to the rescue. However, nothing seemed to phase the giant and try as the rescuers might, every attempt to free the whippet from the jaws of death failed; all frantic efforts to relax the canine vice-grip were to no avail.

It so happened that also in the loop of perpetual renovation and on site for the day was a carpenter. Hearing the ruckus below, he ran to the nearest window, and assessing the gravity of the situation, quickly rushed to the scene shouting, “I know what to do!” To Kelly’s surprise, the carpenter, wielding the tool of his trade, bypassed the massive jaws, ran to the stern of the brute and…. At this point Kelly demonstrated what happened next. In a smooth, sideways motion as if he were using both hands to chunk a stick of wood into a woodstove, Kelly mimed what the carpenter did next with his hammer. Either surprised by the assault on its backside or the sensation it caused, the mastiff’s jaws sprung open as if someone pushed a magic button. Released from those champing jaws, the freed whippet quickly used its graceful legs to distance itself from the slobbering massive maw. As he finished his story, a gleeful grin flashed across Kelly’s face.

Unless they’re a carpenter, not many go about their daily lives carrying a tool belt or a hammer, nor would it be practical for me to carry either while out in the Valley astride Gladys. I’ll continue to pack the much lighter pepper spray canister when I venture out there. The Ripple relates Kelly’s story as a public service, a tip or helpful hint, if you will, that should a reader some day find himself in a similar circumstance, there’s a very good way to get a handle on—or in--the situation.

What’s Croppin’ in the Valley…

It’s a nice summer morning. Gladys and I are leisurely wheeling along the Lower Loop Road. I notice an official looking SUV parked on the shoulder. We pass by a gentleman apparently doing official work in his portable office. He looks up as I pass. I smile and nod. Gladys sends a cheery ting-a-ling. He smiles, returns my nod and continues his business.

On up the road we go enjoying the refreshing cool of the morning. As we pedal along, I notice the trunk of Gramma Frohning’s Honda is open and brimming with petunias. Now I’ve seen creative planter boxes but never the trunk of a car as a floral destination (excepting, of course, our other Gramma, Gramma Snow and her rosebush in tow when she was giving one of her rosebushes, much to its surprise, a ride to town attached to the bumper of her black Mercury Sable). Gramma F. was puttering about, so I thought I’d stop and compliment her on her creative floral display. She laughed at the joke, and I let her get on with her transplanting.

I round the corner above Swiss Hall and there’s that white Blazer again, creeping along on the shoulder just opposite Broers’ Farms strawberry patch where it comes to rest. The same gentleman I saw earlier is entering information into a portable computer. The Ripple, as always, is curious. “Any news for me?” I say. The fellow looks up from his work, smiles, and says, “I know those are strawberries.” As do I, I tell him, and share that I should know: I picked berries myself in that same field last year. “The last time I was in the Valley,” he replies, “there weren’t berries here.”* I read the official message on the side of his vehicle: “WSDA Washington State Department of Agriculture.” Ah, another official government intrusion in the Valley, I think, and wander over to the side of the SUV. Unlike the County bridge inspectors I met last month, this gentleman is friendly and more than willing to talk about his mission. He presents an official card introducing “Mr. Rodney D. Baker, Crop Mapping, Western Washington Natural Resources Assessment Section.”Mr. Baker, I learn, is cruising the Valley, recording its crops and acreage in production. He is one of only two Department of Agriculture crop mappers: Western Washington his jurisdiction. Rodney’s Eastern Washington counterpart is responsible for mapping over three hundred different types of commercial crops in that part of the state. “Any commercial crop of two acres plus we map and record,” Rodney says. “What about my quince tree?” I ask. “If you have a two acre quince orchard,”he replies, “we’ll map and put it on record.”

I ask Mr. Baker if the Department records any of the exotic crops that are a recent phenomenon in our state’s National Forests. Rodney smiles; he understands my reference immediately, shakes his head. “Thank goodness the National Forests are not our responsibility,” he laughs, “but if the State designates medical marijuana as a legal commercial crop, we’ll map and record acreage and location.”Mention of  exotic agriculture prompts Baker to tell me about other experimental crops farmers are trying in our state. I learn one grower in Eastern Washington has planted ten acres of tobacco. A farmer in Skagit County is growing black tea. (“It grows well, belongs to the camellia family,” says Rodney.)

“What about the Sky River Driving Range?” I enquire, alluding to Alden Farms’ one time golf lawn. Rodney said it was commercial turf: mapped and recorded acreage. “What about now?”I asked, thinking about the farm auction, the empty Victorian house, the Aldens’ migration to Florida, and the plowed under turf of the driving range. The reply: “I’ve got it recorded as ‘fallow ground,’ now.”

I thank Mr. Baker for taking the time to share his mission in the Valley with me, tell him about the “shy” County bridge inspectors. Rodney says he’s more than willing to explain his presence to curious folks, talk about his job and what he’s up to in their area, says people are entitled to an explanation. When I ask if I could take his picture, though, Mr. Baker said he’d rather not pose and offered the white Explorer as his proxy. “It’s not at all about the publicity,” he explains: “In all honesty I just don’t take a good photograph.” “That makes two of us,” I laugh and tell him about the fellow who, when making a store purchase, was asked for some identification. The customer produced his driver’s license, and as he presented it for examination, said of his portrait photo: “I look like I’m dead, don’t I!” “Oh, no,” the clerk replied, “You’ll look a lot better than that when you’re dead!” Rodney chuckles, we say our good-byes, and I go on my way.

I know this might seem presumptuous of the Ripple; it’s not meant to be, but perhaps for the record the Department of Agriculture might like to know of Tualco Valley’s great truffle experiment ( “Trifling with Truffles…” May 29). And the Driving Range lying fallow? As of this post, there’s a new stand of corn where golf balls once sailed through the Valley air, bounced and skipped along the turf….

*After I parted with Mr. Baker, I stopped to chat a bit with Ginnifer Broers. As we were talking, the white Blazer crept passed, stopped a ways up the road. I shared with her the mission of the driver and his official white SUV. She shook her head and said she found it strange the Department of Agriculture didn’t know to the season just what crops were planted where and when.“What’s the point then of all that paperwork we’re required to file each year?” she wondered.” I think-- but don’t say it--Ginnifer, just one more example of the many mysteries that lie between “us and them.”