Morel Mania is the #1 supplier of morel mushroom products. From carved walking sticks to books and T-shirts, they have what morel hunters need. They also host the biggest morel hunting contest the 2nd Saturday of May. Their sightings page is a big hit for hunters to know when to begin looking for morels.
Great website design along with many photos of morels.
Actual Customer Emails:
"Hi Jason, Oh my goodness, I think I died and went to heaven! Andy and Norm got home about 9:00 this evening with that beautiful load of mushrooms. They are more beautiful than diamonds I think, but you are probably getting a little tired of them by now. Anyway, thank you for taking such good care of us, we do appreciate it and will be back next year for more. Andy said that you were good people, which is a real compliment from him. If you are interested in ever coming to Indiana for anything, please let us know if we can help in any way. If you are interested in NASCAR, I have real good Brickyard seats available in amongst all our kids and employees in the northwest corner. Just let me know. Thanks again!"
Peggy Verhonik, Indiana
"Hi Jason, My husband and I just wanted you to know how much we really appreciated the phone call and partial refund offer last night after you received my first email. We also appreciate the fact that after we declined on the partial refund that you made the offer to make a note for a half pound to us next year if we end up ordering again. It is very refreshing to know that there are still people out there who run a business that has morals, values and cares about their customers. As my husband mentioned on the phone, we cooked some last night and they were very good. We have stored some that we may have tonight... :) ....and we are drying some for later. You are a very good businessman and know how to treat your customers and that really means a lot. We will gladly recommend you to anyone who might ask who they can order morels from in the future."
Connie and Truman Spain, Kansas
"Dear Jason,
The shipment arrived safe and sound this morning, just as promised. The mushrooms are really beautiful, the nicest we've ever gotten from you. They're clean and near perfect. We've already treated them with a saline bath and they're drying as we speak. There were almost no insects. You've definitely regained a customer. Put us down for at least another two pounds next year."
With much appreciation
Stephen Blumberg, California
"THANK YOU!!!! They just arrived this morning, and the smell is fantastic- almost want to take off right now and start sauteeing the butter- may just try the bacon thing too- thanks, dude!
Regards from a new customer- PLEASE PUT ME ON YOUR LIST FOR NEXT YEAR AND LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE ANY LEFT FROM THIS YEAR'S CROP."
Jeff Levan Pennslvania
Wisconsin State Journal
THE MORELS OF MAY: TWO YOUNG MOREL-HUNTING EXPERTS, WHO SCOUR THE VALLEYS AND HILLS OF SOUTHERN GRANT COUNTY, HAVE SEEN THEIR BUSINESS ... MUSHROOM. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sunday, May 12, 2002 Section: LOCAL/WISCONSIN Edition: ALL Page: C1 Type: Column Column: ON WISCONSIN Byline: Susan Smith Memo: Susan Lampert Smith writes about the people and places that make Wisconsin unique. Send her story ideas at ssmith@madison.com or care of the Wisconsin State Journal, P.O. Box 8058, Madison, WI 53708. Correction: Names of morel hunters reversed in captions The names of morel mushroom hunters Brett Weber and Jason Edge were reversed in photograph captions on pages C1 and C4 Sunday in the "On Wisconsin" column. (published 5/13/02) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The "morel masters" are trying to educate me, to impart a bit of mushroom wisdom, but I'm a bit, um, distracted. It's a misty May morning, and we're in one of those secret small valleys somewhere between the Platte and Mississippi rivers. A stream trickles along the bottom, wild plum and apple blossoms perfume the air, and orioles send out their liquid trill. I don't care much about any of this, because I'm on my knees and THERE ARE MUSHROOMS EVERYWHERE! In every direction up and down the hillside, morels are uncoiling from the loamy soil, their spongy golden heads shoving aside the leaves and verily screaming, "Pick me! Pick ME!" And so I do. "Knock yourself out," says morel master Brett Weber, 27, who looks bemused. After all, he and partner Jason Edge, also 27, will gather in about 20 pounds of the fabulous ephemeral mushrooms of spring today. And if I want to help them pick, why not? I am an enthusiastic amateur in the world of mushroom hunting. In 20 springs of trooping over hill and dale, having my skin shredded by prickly ash and hair invaded by ticks, I have probably picked the amount of mushrooms equal to the 4 pounds we'll pick under this single dead elm. This is nothing to the morel masters - they've found more than 8 pounds under a single tree, and will harvest and sell more than 500 pounds of mushrooms from the valleys and hills of southern Grant County before the season is over. Weber and Edge have been buddies since they met in first grade and played tag on the hay bales at the Edge farm. The Edge family has been in the area for generations, and Edge does custom fieldwork for many local farmers, so the pair has access to acres of prime morel habitat. "We were told by Larry Lonik that we have the best mushroom habitat in the country," Edge says. Lonik is a national expert on morels who every spring follows the "mushroom line" north from Texas into Wisconsin. Last year, he stayed with the morel masters, filming a movie called "Motherlode" that is available on his Web site, www.morelheaven.com. Most of the footage comes from Grant County. Weber and Edge have been hunting mushrooms since they were young. The business started, says Edge's mother, Joan, when the kids would find so many mushrooms that they put up a sign at the end of their driveway advertising morels for sale. After that, they started selling them at the Dubuque farmers' market for $11 a pound. "Then we heard they were going for $25 a pound in Madison," says Edge. The morel masters have been May visitors to the Dane County Farmers' Market for four years. Then, they hit the big time. Last year they launched a Web site, http://www.morelmasters.com/, and orders, at $25 a pound plus shipping, began pouring in from across the country. It turns out I'm not the only one who is crazy about morels. On the day I visited the Edge family machine shed, where Joan Edge prepares orders for the daily Fed Ex truck pickup, they were putting together an order for 120 pounds from a woman in Indianapolis. She was driving to Wisconsin to pick them up, and planned to feed 500 people with them. (That's more than $2,600 worth of mushrooms.) "A surgeon down in Texas is buying 90 pounds," says Edge, "and next week there's a 45 pound pickup in an airplane." That mushroom fanatic is planning to fly into the Platteville airport to get the treasured mushrooms safely under wing. Edge and Weber take May off from their regular jobs to spend the month in the field. The rest of the year, they're scouting trees and good mushroom territory. They also head down to Illinois for mushroom festivals that begin before the season in Wisconsin. Edge has a trophy in the barn -- a golden man holding a mushroom -- that lauds his fourth consecutive victory in the Jonesboro, Ill., Mushroom Festival. Every year the town hosts a mushroom hunt in the Shawnee National Forest, and every year Edge wins -- even though southern Illinois mushrooms grow under poplars, not dead elms. As for his tips on mushroom hunting -- well, you'll just have to wait until his book comes out next year. My notes from the field look like they were scrawled by an insane person. I did ask him, after all these tons of mushrooms, whether it's still as fun to find morels peeking up above the fresh spring grass. Or does mushroom hunting become routine -- like gourmet food to a chef? "It's still a thrill," Edge says. "When I close my eyes at night, I see mushrooms." For more information on the morel masters, see http://www.morelmasters.com/. More websites with morel information are http://www.morelheaven.com/ and http://www.morelmania.com/ The "morel masters" are no longer taking orders for this season, but to get on their list for next year, send e-mail to JB@morelmasters.com .
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Illustration: State Journal photos/John Maniaci ABOVE: Friends since childhood, Jason Edge, left, and Brett Weber take off work every year for the three-week morel season. They spend the other 49 weeks of the year scouting dead elms and likely locations for the next season. TOP: Brett Weber shows off a natural Wisconsin 12-pack, a dozen morels growing from a single spot.
May 13, 2001 Section: Business{LENGTH} Medium Page: d1
MOREL BOOSTERS A SPRINGTIME DELACACY IS THE BOUNTY FOR SOUTHWEST WISCONSIN PAIR M. D. KITTLE POTOSI, Wis. - If there's a fungus among us, at least within a 20-mile radius of the southwest Wisconsin village of Potosi, chances are Brett Weber and Jason Edge will find it. Weber, 26, of Lancaster, and Edge, 26, of rural Potosi, are the owners of Morelmasters, a supplier of the meaty mushroom cherished by tri-state connoisseurs and devoured by choosy consumers from coast to coast. The company was formed about four years ago, with Weber and Edge spending their mid-spring days trudging through the woods and pastures around southern Grant County, searching for the mushrooms. It's what Weber passionately refers to as "the hunt." "When we started, a good year for us was maybe 150 pounds," Weber said, adding that this year's harvest could top 300 pounds, thanks to a moist spring.
While some might find the morel physically unattrac- tive - the southwest Wisconsin-style mushroom bares a striking resemblance to the under side of a shriveled gray or yellow thumb - it is in high demand in places across the country where the morel is as rare as a cactus in Quebec. Morelmasters charges between $15 and $25 per pound depending on quantity ordered.
The budding company handles most of its business via Internet.
"We don't sell a lot locally," Weber said. "These people that buy can't pick them up where they're at."
Morelmasters have shipped its product to just about every corner of the country. Weber and Edge estimate they will ship about 130 pounds of morels this season.
And while shares of Morelmasters probably won't be traded on Wall Street any time soon, (the company generated about $2,000 in sales last year), profits are respectable for a part-time business with a relatively short season.
Both Weber and Edge have full-time jobs. Weber works at Barnstead Thermolyne in Dubuque; Edge farms with his father. But both men drop everything for a few weeks to go on "the hunt."
And these guys know their mushrooms.
Edge spends his farming days each summer searching the rolling hills around Potosi for dead and dying elm trees. For mushroomers, elms are where the action is.
"Nine months after an elm has been dead is when they start producing the right nutrients," he said. It's those nutrients that provide fertile ground for the fungi to grow.
But what morels really crave is moisture - and plenty of it.
"We've had a lot of rain here," Weber said. "They love cool temperatures and rain, a lot of wet weather."
Edge and Weber struggled to pick 200 pounds during last year's bone-dry season.
"The only place you could find the morels was the deep woods where the moisture remained," Edge said.
"We had to walk a lot of miles to pick mushrooms last year," Weber added.
The morel season usually runs about three to four weeks, but can last up to six weeks depending on conditions. This year, Weber spotted his first fungus on April 4. And he remembers the exact moment of last season's first morel.
"It was April 17, at 5:38 p.m.," he quickly recalled, while plucking a prime mushroom growing near an elm tree on the south slope of a plush green hill.
"Once we spot that first morel, usually a week after a guy can start picking," Edge said.
The mushroomers have been putting in long days of late, hunting morels from "sun up to sundown," and spending their evenings at Edge's rural Potosi home cleaning and packaging their product. Edge's kid-brother, Jesse, has been helping out, hauling each days bounty on the back of an all-terrain vehicle.
"I like to do it. It's fun," Jesse Edge said.
Morelmasters have become a hot spot for inquisitive morel lovers. Weber and Edge spend much of their spare time fielding questions on the Internet from would-be and expert mushroom hunters.
On Tuesday, morel maven Larry Lonik, author of a number of books on his favorite fungus, paid Weber and Edge a visit.
Lonik, 51, has been seeking and studying morels for 45 years. The Chelsea, Mich., resident was at Morel Master headquarters to shoot footage for an upcoming video on, what else, morels.
"These guys are the most knowledgeable mushroom hunters that I've ever run into," Lonik said of Weber and Edge. That's pretty high praise from a guy who was once called upon to serve his special mushroom cuisine to former President Bush.
While Morelmasters continue to grow, the company's owners seem more obsessed with the morel itself, rather than the money it generates.
There was a gleam in Weber's eye as he held up what he considered to be two "perfect mushrooms." Weber, an avid golfer, compared the morels to "a set of Titleist 990s," possibly the gold standard in golf balls.
And though the young businessmen have done fairly well for themselves, they are really only doing what they have done since they were kids: tromping through the hills and woods in search of that magnificent mushroom.
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Morel Measures
Brett Weber and Jason Edge have set some personal morel records since starting Morelmasters. The friendly competition has contributed to some pretty impressive mushrooms, of which most morel hunters would be proud.
* Tallest Mushroom: 141/2 inches - Weber
* Heaviest Mushroom: 1 pound, 3 ounces - Edge
Weber and Edge collected 41 pounds of morels in one day in 1999, a record that they predict will be broken this morel season.
