Archived truffle notes, and harvest observations from the 2020 season
2020 Season
A cold Summer led to a small, reduced harvest in 2020. Not only truffles, local crops like grapes and apples were all affected, with harvest volumes around 50% of a normal season. A nice cold start to Winter and early Autumn produced high quality truffle earlier than ever seen in past years, with good truffles from mid-June. July had wonderful cold, dry weather perfect for hunting and producing great quality. Frequent rain in August made harvesting more difficult, but all orders were readily filled.
There was very low demand for truffles due to Covid lockdown and most truffle was sold for use as spore for trees. We predicted this in February though and saved considerable labour costs pre-winter for a further loss of harvestable truffle, which then matched the actual demand nicely, with none left spare.
Some preliminary tests with preservation yielded great results and we will develop the products/techniques further in 2021