BA RIA – VUNG TAU termites mushrooms fungus grows a lot after a sudden rain, people in Xuyen Moc district flock to rubber forests and pepper gardens to search, lucky days collect a few million dongs.
Rubber forest in Xuyen Moc district, where for about three days now, people have flocked to search for termites mushrooms from night until dawn. Each season, termite mushrooms grow three times after a series of hot days, with sudden rain and this is the second wave of fungi.
After dinner, Mr. Truong Tuan (blue shirt) and three friends in Hamlet 1, Bau Lam Commune, carrying a flashlight, a plastic bag and drinking water, drove a motorbike to the forest about 3 km from his house. After about 15 minutes of searching, the team discovered a group of mushrooms growing in the mound.
After cutting off the wild vines, the termite mushrooms appeared. The members of the group told each other to be careful not to damage or step on the mushrooms that were covered by the leaves.
“termites mushrooms grow in clusters of a few dozen trees, sometimes even thousands of trees. I’ve harvested more than two kilograms of mushrooms, and I love it,” Mr. Tuan said.
The mushroom was deeply rooted in the hard ground, and Mr. Tuan used a sharp stick to poke it down to trap the mushroom.
After pulling out nearly half a kilogram, Tuan’s group searched for two hours and couldn’t find any mushrooms.
At the edge of the forest a few hundred meters away, Nguyen Phuong, 29, ducked into the trees to search. He entered the forest at dawn and plucked more than 5 kg of mushrooms, selling for two million dong. “Today, I walked about 30 km, tired and sleepy but had to take advantage to earn extra income,” Phuong said.
In addition to being pricked by thorns when harvesting, mushroom hunters like Phuong are bitten by mosquitoes, and encounter snakes and scorpions.
According to Phuong, he spent 15 years uprooting termites mushrooms, knowing every nook and cranny, but he didn’t always go to the forest to meet him. “Heaven’s hunting is also random. I can’t see it when I step over, but people who come after a few minutes can pull up the whole mushroom package,” Phuong said.
The mushrooms that Phuong can uproot in the thorn bush. Near midnight, he left the forest and met dozens of people in the neighborhood who drove home with little success. The number of mushrooms harvested is more than a kilogram, he cooks nutritious chicken porridge for his wife and children.
Mr. Nguyen Van Lap (second from right) sold 250,000 VND after one night of mushroom hunting. Three days ago, he and a group of 5 friends left home in Dinh Quan district (Dong Nai) and rode a motorbike for more than 70 km to Xuyen Moc district to search.
On the day he sleeps in a hammock in the rubber forest, eats dust, bathes in streams, at night rides motorbikes through the forests. The luckiest time, he pulled more than 10 kg of mushrooms, earning more than 5 million. “I follow the termite mushroom because of my passion, but my income also changes day by day because its season is too short and full of luck,” Lap said.
Termite mushrooms are purchased by small traders in the forest at the price of 200-550 thousand VND per kg, the highest price for bud mushrooms. They sell them along the road in Bau Lam and Hoa Binh communes and send them to Ho Chi Minh City, Dong Nai and Binh Duong.
After scraping the bark at the roots, termite mushrooms are processed in many delicious dishes such as porridge, soup, stock, stir-fry. In Ba Ria – Vung Tau, termites mushrooms grow in Xuyen Moc and Chau Duc districts.
(According to vnexpress)