Tehachapi Truffles

Truffle farm update - Spring 2009

2009-03-24T11:55:00.001-07:00

All has been quiet on the truffle farm in the past year. After the devastation caused by marauding sheep in the summer of 2007, we found ourselves hoping for some buds on replanted trees this year. Thankfully, we caught the sheep owner and were reimbursed for much of the damage.

Now that the last winter's snow has melted, a quick walk of the now-tiny truffle plot revealed about 65 survivors. This is sad because we planted 600 originally, 200 of which were bad to begin with, and 300 of which were grazed and eaten by sheep. But it's a new year and we've got to work with what we've got left...and some new stock. I'm placing an order for 44 last-minute replacement trees to give us an even 100 and some nice, filled-in looking rows.

Once they arrive and are planted we should be on the mend and have a much more manageable plot, safe from wild herds of sheep and other possible predators.

Try explaining trading zebra for truffle farm interest to your tax man...

2008-02-18T12:42:00.000-08:00

We went to get our taxes done last night. It was my first year having a "farm loss" and the ever-patient CPA was quite confused as I explained that I traded 1.5 zebras for my mother's interest in the truffle farm. I am fairly certain it was his first farm expense statement combing both zebras and truffles in the same return. Then again, I'm sure it was his first return with either a zebra or a truffle involved. We did the trade so as not to have so many of our investments intertwined now that I'm married, and have a baby and all that good stuff that has happened since the trees arrived.

In other news, a friend in Texas was kind enough to send me a link to THIS GREAT ARTICLE by Peter Alsop on truffle farming in the U.S. It came out this weekend on Salon.com. I had never heard of the magazine before, but the article is extremely well-written so go check it out.

Success and possible truffle-farming nuns

2008-02-16T14:21:00.001-08:00

So I heard a rumor that someone who bought truffle-infused hazelnut trees from New World Truffieres (same place we got ours) found their first truffle in their farm just east of Sacramento, California this year. The trees are five year old hazelnuts and I think they have 50 trees. I'm not sure how the quality of the truffle is, who found it, or how, but it's good to know the spore survived.

I also heard the Norbertine Sisters and the Bethlehem Convent here in Tehachapi may soon be receiving a gift in the form of some truffle trees. Seems we've started a trend...

The $330,000 Truffle

2007-12-19T18:05:00.000-08:00

I know, it's been a while, again. But this time I have a really good excuse: I've been busy having a baby. Yep, Sarah Addison McQuillen, heiress to the truffle throne of Tehachapi, was born on October 16, 2007. She's healthy, happy, and ecstatic to learn that truffle sales are going strong, having recently reached the $100,000 per pound mark. Seriously.

I'm sure you've all heard that some crazy Macauan billionaire bought a three pound white truffle at an auction for $330,000. Here is the Italian truffle hunter holding the monstrosity and cheering at the auction price:I hope to one day be at a casino in Masau have a picture like that taken of me with a famous Tehachapi truffle. And here is the truffle itself:
I guess it had its own photo shoot. It looks quite unappetizing to me. And what exactly does a person do with a 3.3 pound, $330,000 truffle? I haven't found any news stories on what happened to the truffle but I imagine it's been consumed since they are best eaten fresh.

Truffles in Eastern Sierras in July???

2007-09-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

I almost forgot to tell you about this. Hubby Mark and I went up to Tahoe in July to visit family. On the way there we stopped for the night in Mammoth Lakes to break up the drive. Yes, it is a rough life we lead...Mark knew of a nice little restaurant at nearby Convict Lake aptly named, The Restaurant at Convict Lake, so we headed there for dinner. As we perused the menu what do you think we saw?

Chicken Marsala - Penne Pasta

sauteed with roasted red bell peppers, truffles, capers, cremini mushrooms
and finished with asiago and fried basil.....$21.95

That's right - a dish with truffles in it! Truffle snob that I am, I complained that they must be frozen seeing as how the harvest season had long since passed. Mark ordered the dish anyhow and when it came you could definitely smell the pungent propanish-garlicish scent of truffle. I personally couldn't taste them in it and couldn't distinguish between the cremini mushroom slivers and truffle shavings, if any. I'm thinking it may have been truffle oil that was used. It was still pretty good, though.

Incidentally, the restaurant is nice, if a bit pricey. Then again, if the dish had real truffles I guess $21.95 is cheap. Note that they do not, however, serve chocolate milk, and could not figure out how to take the chocolate syrup that is no doubt behind the bar or in the cooler and add it to milk. Forget the truffles, I judge a restaurant by its ability to produce a glass of chocolate milk for me even when it's not on the menu.

The heir(ess) to the truffle kingdom

2007-09-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

Those of you who know either of the truffle queens know that the younger of the two has been busy cultivating the heir(ess) to the yet-to-be realized truffle fortune.

Because I'm fat, bored and tired of waddling around chasing sheep, I decided to start a blog on behalf of the soon-to-emerge young truffle farmer (six weeks to go!!!). I added the link to the right, but if you are lazy or confused, you can also click here to learn what Lentil Bean (what we call the baby) is thinking and doing. It's called Lentil Soup and hopefully will have more entertaining fodder than this site. Enjoy!

Yet another reason I don't like sheep.

2007-08-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

So I've never liked sheep. They are stupid, sleep in their own poo, smell bad, and are downright annoying. They are so boring people count them to put themselves to sleep. I do, however, enjoy when they come around the rural parts of Tehachapi and graze this time of year, because, really, how many folks can look out their windows and see herds of sheep dotting their hillsides? That was then, this is now...

I was never sure what exactly they were eating since it's so dry until I came home the other night and found about 300 of them being herded out of our yard.

Yep, imagine my surprise when I pulled in to the driveway just in time to see a herd running and stampeding their way off our property. Of course, they took the route right through the truffle farm, which they had apparently already grazed. That's right, the herd got through the herder's fencing and onto the truffle farm. In case you were wondering, this is what a two year old hazelnut tree looks like after a few sheep have had their way with it:No leaves, no tree tube, just a twig sticking out of the ground. Not cool, sheep, not cool.

They didn't actually get all the trees. About 30 are MIA completely, and another 81 look like the example above. They also trampled the irrigation lines so each has to be reset, destroyed about half the tubes and stakes, and generally terrorized the place in no particular order:Seeing as how I was the only witness to the fleeing herd and had just seen CSI: Rural Communities Edition, I spent the next morning assessing damage and collecting evidence. First, I got the hoofprints in the driveway:And still some more hoofprints showing the path of the exodus toward the homestead:And then more distinctive prints near a missing tree:And a few pictures of the rest of my non-truffle crops having been thoughtfully pruned to a height of about four feet. There will be no Christmas jam this year folks:After completing the investigation I filed what may be the first ever "sheep ate my truffle trees" report in North America with local authorities. I'm not sure the deputy understood the gravity of the situation or the fact that he was making truffle history but at least he took the report and it is now probably on the bulletin board at the local sheriff's office next to the extraordinary report of the man who robbed the Circle K with a machete.

I have the phone number of one of the non-English speaking shepherds, the one who was no doubt asleep on the job when said sheep flocked to the estate and trampled it for hours on end. I intend to find the owner and send him a bill for the 111 damages trees, irrigation repair and replacement costs, and damages to my vegetables and fruit around the house. No, they don't know I'm a lawyer. They just think I'm a crazy pregnant woman babbling about expensive mushrooms.

Baaaaad sheep.

What's the deal with Chinese truffles?

2007-07-24T12:22:00.000-07:00

Holy cow, has it really been since May since I've posted? Is anybody even still out there reading? If so, this blog's for you...

A friend recently called to tell me about the latest low quality import from China - black truffles. It was only a matter of time before some developing country caught on to our desire to eat hoity toity fungus and decided to capitalize on it. Seeing as how I once lived in China and am now a truffle farmer myself, I thought I'd investigate the burgeoning import market.

First, I googled "Chinese black truffles" and found www.chinesetruffle.com. If you go check them out, you will find that they are not representing the chinese black truffle as the same species as the french black truffle (tuber melanosporum) or any of the other high end truffles. Nope, these have different botanical names, Tuber Sinensis and Tuber Himalayensis, and are a product of China, rather than a European product being introduced in China. This is important to note when you are shopping for them and getting your undergarments in a knot at the thought of the Chinese capitalizing on what we Americans are trying to capitalize on first. Other truffle scientists claim the truffles being cultivated in China are actually Indian truffles known as tuber indicum, that some have compared to a weed or blight due to its resiliency and quick propagation.

This page explains the descriptions of Chinese truffles, going so far as to compare the Tuber Himalayensis with the coveted tuber melanosporum. The pictures look the same to me so I'm sure I could be fooled easily. Here is the pricing page info. At about $10 per kilogram they seem quite reasonable.

Even Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and NPR have recently covered the Chinese Truffle Trifle. Click on Truffle Kerfuffle to read Time's article, which is recommended because it covers both the Chinese and French perspectives and has some funny quotes, like

"Labor is very cheap here," Wu says. "In France they use pigs and dogs to find truffles. We can use humans."

Sucks to be human when your labor is less valued than that of a dog or pig...Then again, when I was in China they ate dogs.

The WSJ's article is shorter and has a couple of quotes from the same Mr. Wu of the Kunming Rare Truffle Company.

NPR has more in-depth coverage in its two-part article by Louisa Lim. She interviewed Mr. Wu and took the picture above. The article also discusses foie gras and force-feeding geese, something I'd never contemplated before today.

If you'd like to take a chance and order a Chinese truffle or two, just for your own amusement and tasting pleasure, here's a link to Alibaba.com's Chinese Truffle page. I'm not kidding, you can buy a chinese truffle from Alibaba. Sounds like a great Christmas gift idea to me...

Invasion!

2007-05-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

I know, I know...It's been a while. Too long really. What can I say? We've been busy. First I got married, then we realized when you're married you live together so we moved the hubby up to the farm, then we travelled, and now he's gone to Europe for two months. Add to that the arrival of my brother and nephew, complications involved there, and running a truffle farm starts to seem a bit trivial.

Good news is that things have settled down for a while and the first sign of spring, in the form of grazing sheep, is here!
Yes, those little blobs in the distance beind the farm are sheep. It's open grazing territory out here so they just kind of roam around in the spring helping with yardwork. Fortunately the sheephearders put up a little fence to block them from invading the farm. Here's another view of them:
They've been around for a few days and it is kind of nice sitting out watching them.

In other news, I found my first sign of fungus on the farm while I was out laying drip line the other week:
See it at the bottom? A dried mushroom. Nope, not the valuable kind. Hopefully it's a sign of fungus to come!!! Oooh, and look at that lovely drip line. Such nice work...

More truffle news

2007-04-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

It's snowing again today in Tehachapi so no one's in the mood to plant. The good news is that the 450 trees in the ground look to be recovering from the shock of planting and are doing well and showing new growth.

Rather than plant trees or do my taxes (researching farm profit and loss for those interested), I Googled "truffle cultivation" and found a few more stories on truffle farming in the U.S.:

Click here for an article about Franklin Garland of Garland Truffles in North Carolina and Bob Pasarelli, a North Carolina chef, and their successes with truffle cultivation in North Carolina.

I also found a new truffle company, Truffle Cultivation, Inc., who are based out of Oregon and purport to have a sales office in France. Interesting to this attorney-farmer is the fact that the end of their website presentation states why they chose the corporate structure they did. Kind of funny if you ask me. They don't list pricing, products, or scientific information so I'm not sure what to make of them. I didn't find them in an online search of the Oregon Department of Corporations so if you're interested in them, be sure to check them out.

While at the Oregon Department of Corporations I did happen to search for corporations with the word "truffle" in their name. Here is the link to the list of 29 such names!!! Some appear to deal with those other kinds of truffles (the sweet ones), but several appear to be farms. I'll check into them and get back to you.

I found that kind of interesting, 'cause I'm kind of geeky that way, so I went over to the North Carolina Secretary of State's Corporations page and found these seven truffle-related businesses - all located in North Carolina. Interestingly enough, it shows that Garland Truffles, the above-referenced media darling of the North Carolnia truffle world, has a suspended corporate status as of today's date. This may mean nothing but is something those of you doing business with them should know and clarify who you are sending money to because I don't know about North Carolina, but it's sometimes illegal in California to do business with a knowingly suspended corporation.

Of course, no search would be complete without checking out my home state, California. I only found three "truffle" corporations here (probably because of our high corporate taxes...). Here is the link. Nope, we're not incorporated yet because, well, we don't have any business to worry about until we actually find that legendary black gold. One pound should just about cover the annual fees...

You can do these searches in your own state by going to the Secretary of State/Department of Corporations page and doing a search for businesses with the words "truffle", "truffiere", or whatever turns you on in them.

Back to those farm taxes...

West Side Story

2007-04-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, we planted (me, Diana and Mark (my new husband) 450 trees in just five days. It all started with Mark running the trencher down 420 feet of property line. He claims he wasn't drunk but the row looks like a sobriety test gone bad to me...Still, a trench is a trench, right?
After that, we put my poor new hubby (less than a week into wedded bliss) to work marking rows and digging holes. Doesn't he look happy?
Diana (Mom) and I then followed with trees, tubes and stakes:
Before we knew it, the first row of oaks was in!!! Isn't it pretty?We crossed the gully to the east side and decided to save 20 spare hazelnuts in pots to replace any we might lose over the next year or so. Plus, we were just too darned tired after planting 450 trees to do another row.
And a few days later, the entire west side of the gully was full of oaks and hazelnuts. How cool will this be in five years???
More as soon as we complete the east side (152 oaks to be exact) and our new favorite pasttime - installing drip irrigation.

Note to future truffle farmers: It's a lot of work planting 600 trees so get some help!!!

One bourbon, one scotch, one french black truffle???

2007-04-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

If your up on truffle cultivation I'm sure you've heard that Tom Michaels recently harvested his first successful crop of Perigords in the small town of Chuckey, Tennessee. In fact, they are so good he's sold them to restaurants in Manhattan. Here is the link to a nice article on Tennessee Truffles in none other than the New York Times.

The gist of it is that he has about 2,500 hazelnut trees he planted in 2000. So it took seven years. He's getting $50 an ounce for them (that equals $800 a pound).

His success was such big news it even made the papers in the UK - where they are also trying to cultivate the famous fungus and give France a run for its truffle money.

And here is another good link to an article on Mr. Michaels and his success from the Knoxville News Sentinel website. It even has a picture of his hazelnut orchard so you can see what our orchard might look like in seven years!

Finally, here's a link to an inspiring article in the Vancouver Sun about cultivating the spores in British Columbia.

I'm still looking for Mr. Michaels' website to link to and will post it as soon as I find it. In the meantime, I've got some irrigation to install!!!

600 Trees and a Snowstorm

2007-04-04T13:25:00.000-07:00

Three days after we received our trees a nice snowstorm blew in. This is what the truffle farm looked like a week after accepting delivery:
Scenic as it is, it's not very good for planting so we threw the trees in the barn (our version of cold storage) and waited for what we hope was the last storm of the season to pass. As happens in life, it passed and we've been busy planting trees ever since. Pictures of the planting to come soon!

One if by land...

2007-03-13T04:34:00.000-07:00

OK. I'll admit it: We are, by nature, procrastinators. And I mean that in the nicest way. Quite frankly, we are adrenalin junkies. Until the pressure is on, we are distracted and less than productive.

And so we waited for some signal, like Paul Revere: "One if by land, two if by sea." And while our shot may not have been "heard around the world", it still reverberates in my ears.

One loud shot. A wake up call. Only the message was not delivered by Paul Revere. Instead, it was UPS. Our trees arrived Friday: 8 boxes...600 trees!

And so, the pressure is on. The water tank is in place. The plumbing is ongoing.

We are scrambling to locate tree tubes and limestone, and of course, shovels. And for the next week, like the Patriots, we will be caught up in battle, because mother nature is playing some very strange tricks on us with the weather.

So we will labor in the sun for the next few days, and then we will probably freeze for a while. But whatever the weather, those trees will go in the ground.

That's the thing about procrastinators: They tend to get things done.

Ripping Time!

2007-02-12T10:53:00.000-08:00

We finally had some nice-ish weather last week so I went out and staked out the truffle farm area for Pat, the tractor guy. The soil was perfect for ripping so, after Pat, a master gardener, gave me his two cents' worth on how to start a truffle farm, he finally went to work tilling the field:
He's a shy guy and didn't want me taking pictures of him so I had to hide in the barn and shoot through the dirty window. In case you're looking for a tractor guy, Pat's the kind you want. He has long hair, smokes incessantly, likes cash, and isn't afraid of a little hard work.
His little tractor (a John Deere 70) did quite well but I think we'll use one with bigger rippers to do the final pass before we plant. Still, it got everything fluffed up and confirmed that we have nice, loamy soil to work with. We also picked up a bunch of garbage - beer bottles, old car parts, various pipes, and even and old black and yellow California license plate from 1963 - and some huge rocks that I'll use around the yard for landscaping some day.

I also found a local nursery that will do free soil testing. It's a strange day when you get excited about that sort of thing...

2007 Oregon Truffle Festival Recap

2007-02-06T16:47:00.000-08:00

We headed up to Eugene , Oregon the other weekend to attend the Cultivation Seminar at the Second Annual Oregon Truffle Festival. The seminar and festival were put together by Dr. Charles LeFevre, who we are purchasing our 600 truffle-infused trees from, and his associates up there. They did a terrific job of organizing and kept us busy for three days straight so kudos to them.

As for us budding truffle farmers, we learned a lot from our wonderful instructors, Dr. Carlos Colinas and Christine Fischer, but less than expected in cultivation seminar as a whole. What we mostly learned is that cultivation is so new, especially in the U.S., that no one can really give you a straight answer on anything. Or, perhaps, no one wants to be liable for giving an answer that may eventually be proven incorrect. So we basically learned that anything may be possible in the world of tuber melanosporum cultivation aka truffle farming and that if you want to learn more you should just dive right in and find out if it works for you.

That said, we did meet a lot of nice and interesting people at various stages of their truffle farming endeavors. Some are dreamers, some are planners, some are a few years in, some have a few trees, some 400 trees, some no trees. We learned that you train a trufflehound like you'd train a drug-sniffing dog, and that virtually any breed with stamina will work (we're already arguing over what types of dogs to get even though our trees haven't arrived!). We also learned that the truffle cultivation seminar may be something to attend only once, then plant, and then wait a few years until you see how your farm is doing, then return for the grower's forum if you have questions, or answers to help others along.

Best of all for us, we finally saw, smelled and tasted our first truffles!

Here we are getting our very first whiff of a french black truffle recently harvested in Tennessee of all places! I'd like to offer the disclaimer that we don't normally look that strange and that the unphotogenic gene runs in the family...

Either way, I think the picture reflects our trepidation and dismay at the crop we're banking on. Neither of us appears to have the palate to appreciate a $1,000 piece of fungus, which will probably be helpful as we won't be sneaking truffles behind eachother's backs. Call me simple but I would choose a box of Cheez-Its over a 4 ounce truffle any day.

Still, at least we now know what they look, and smell, like. Here is a picture of the infamous tuber melanosporum, aka Perigord or french black truffle, that we will be growing:

And here it is up close and sliced in half. You can see the marble-like appearance that means it's ripe. It has an earthy but potent smell that makes me wonder how anyone ever felt the need to dig up this little, smelly dirt-clod looking thing and place it in their mouth. As I said, I'm simple...We ate that one soon after the photo was taken. It was grated into some excellent Spanish olive oil and drizzled on some bread slices. Personally, I think I liked the olive oil more than the truffle. I guess I'm still cultivating my hoity toity-ness.

Oregon has its own native truffles known as the Oregon white and Oregon black truffles. Here is a picture of the oregon white truffle:

Seeing as how we truffle queens both live off the power grid and rely on propane for heat, we immediately recognized the pungent odor of garlicky propane being emitted from these dime-sized tubers. After making this observation a scientist informed us that the Oregon white truffle odor does indeed have the same chemical structure as the scent they add to propane and would be in the propane family of odors. Two points to the truffle queens for recognizing noxious odors!

We saw some other types of truffles, looked in microscopes at micorryzhae (which look like little corn dogs), and after two days of learning about truffle history and farming, left feeling fairly confident in our endeavor as we appeared to have the climate and soil most similar to where the truffles are found in Spain, France and Italy.

After spending Friday and Saturday in class, we attended the Grand Truffle Dinner with 298 other food and truffle afficionados. The meal had an appetizer, three courses, and a dessert, all of which were prepared by James Beard award winning chefs and included truffles. Here is what our menu consisted of:

AMUSE BOUCHE - Tuna Crudo with Celery-Anchovy Salad & Truffle Vinaigrette (By Chefs Stephanie Pearl Kimmel & Rocky Maselli of Marche in Eugene)

FIRST COURSE - Oregon Dungeness Crab Salad with Black Truffles, Apples & Shell Beans (By Chef Vitaly Paley of Paley's Place in Portland)

SECOND COURSE - Timbale of Fingerling Potatoes & Truffles with a Potage of Leeks & Root Vegetables (By Chef Greg Higgins of Higgins Restaurant & Bar in Portland)

THIRD COURSE - Papillotte of Coquelet with Truffle Port Compote & Celeriac Mousseline (By Chef Philippe Boulot of The Heathman in Portland)

DESSERT - Truffle Pear Tarte Tatin with Sour Cream Puff Pastry, Roasted Hazelnuts & Truffle-Honey Ice Cream By Chefs Cory Schreibner, Michelle Vernier & Dustin Clark of Wildwood in Portland.

In my opinion, the amuse bouche, first course (my favorite!!!) and dessert were awesome. The second course was okay and I like the idea of a timbale (a mashed potato plop in the center of a bowl of gravyish soup). The third course looked terrible on a white plate and my chicken inside the pastry was dry but I did like the little chicken legs surrounding it as they were tasty. Then again, I'm not a food critic or even close to being a gourmet so take that how you will. Either way, here's my only clear picture of the dessert, which was way better than it looks:
In the end we had fun, met lots of interesting people, and got a zillion ideas for experiments to conduct as we start our truffle farm this month. We also formed a Yahoo Group because everyone said they wanted to keep in touch. Of course, no one has joined yet. If you want to join or check it out, you can click on the link to the right.

Next up: Setting up the farm, complete with pictures!

How we got the idea to cultivate expensive mushrooms

2007-01-24T14:13:00.000-08:00

It all started a few years back when my mom, Diana, was looking for real estate in Kern County where she could raise her menagerie of animals on what would one day become Windswept Ranch. She and husband David somehow got the idea that they might invest in some real estate wherein they could both raise exotic animals and grow hoity toity mushrooms, a natural combination. Unfortunately, such an estate was not available in the desired price range so they settled for just being exotic animal ranchers in the town of Twin Oaks, California.

Flash forward six years to when I, Kassandra the daughter, decided people in southern California were going crazy and paying too much for real estate and so decided to cash out my vast 1/2 acre mobile home/house hybrid and flee to Kern County to start a new life. I moved to a ranchette off the power grid on 6 acres just outside the small mountain town of Tehachapi , California.

Soon enough the lot next door to my house came up for sale and, greedy for solitude and mountain views like this:

I bought an additional 3.5 acres.

While contemplating what to do with the new acreage, my mother remembered her dreams (hallucinations?) of becoming a truffiere and our plan was hatched: We would form a dynamic mother-daughter duo and become the Truffle Queens of Tehachapi.

With the decision made and the land in hand, we of course turned to the internet for all our truffle growing needs. That's where we found Dr. Charles Lefevre at New World Truffieres who had no problem convincing us that two brown thumbs should most certainly invest thousands of dollars in a truffle farm. We promptly ordered 600 trees infused with the French black truffle fungus spore.

Now it's January and truffle planting season is upon us. Of course, the one trait common to this mother-daughter duo is procrastination. Just as soon as we return from the Oregon Truffle Festival this weekend, where we intend to learn everything we need to know about growing truffles (and taste our first truffles), we'll get started on the farming aspect. Really, we mean it!

In the meantime, my pig Hogitha is on guard, watching over the future truffiere: