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Mushroom season lasts from late summer to mid-autumn, but Polish people preserve most of the fungi they collect, so that they can enjoy them all year long. This they do mostly by drying and to a lesser extent by pickling in vinegar (mostly in the case of slippery jacks and other species which don't lend themselves to drying) or, less traditionally, freezing. The Poles typically gather mushrooms for their own use, but they face competition from professional gatherers who, though less numerous (only 1% of all mushroomers), pick much larger quantities than recreational mushroom hunters do.
This is the situation today. And what was it like in the past? "Mushrooming's ancient and decorous rite" is described with great beauty in ''Pan Tadeusz'', the Polish national epic written by Adam Mickiewicz (pronounced ''{{pron|meets-<small>KYEV</small>-eetch''|kyeh|veetch}}) in 1834. So let's pay yet another visit to the fictional manor of Soplicowo (''sawp-leet-{{smallpron|saw|plee|tsaw|SAWvaw}}-vaw'') and see what kinds of mushrooms the characters gathered and what use they later put them to.
== “There Were Mushrooms Aplenty” ==