38 hunts. 21 different locations. 73kg truffle. 22 days of hunting.
Aroma this month was superb with nice cold nights and days ripening a good number of the truffles. Significantly less rot and only a couple days of heavy rain around 2nd week of August. Bug damage was reduced most likely due to the coldest part of winter reducing insect activity.
By mid-August all farms’ harvests were slowly dropping. However, farms which only started early July were still harvesting up until early September (my last hunt of the season was 4th September). Farms which started in early June were finishing up in Mid Aug. So, if your farm starts earlier it seems to also finish earlier which seem quite logically will that happen every year? Who knows. We must ask the truffle gods each year.
Farms I was still visiting in the last week of August started to have quite dry soil as there hadn’t been much rain mid to late Aug and the spring rains hadn’t started yet.
This month I had one of my videos go absolutely viral which was a first for me. A 341K views and still counting. I was videoing a harvest when, through the phone screen, I saw I had disturbed a spider and it had crawled up onto my gloved hand. Seeing that through the phone screen I then proceed to flick my hand to get it off. I was so shocked that I didn’t even make a sound but my adrenaline was definitely pumping. This hasn’t occurred in my 10 years of hunting and I hope it doesn’t happen for the next 10 years.
Another interesting thing which occurred this year which has never happened in the last decade, was I started finding ripe borchii at a number of farms which were not inoculated with Borchii. The reason for this I think is that the warmer season overall meant that borchii started ripening earlier this year and finished earlier as well. An example of which is a farm which produced 3.4 kg of borchii in 2025 started in mid-August and finished end of September. This year, 2026 season, that farm produced 7kg of borchii starting last week of June and finishing last week of August.
Some farms most likely had trees which were unknowingly double inoculated with winter and spring truffle. Due to the fact this was unknown when borchii is usually ripe mid-August through to end of September I would have finished hunting at these farms due to the different harvest times. However, this season there was a larger cross over of the winter truffle and spring truffles ripening periods hence finding some of these surprise borchii.
Overall, a good August for producing farms. Farms which had a challenging year due to water issues throughout the year unfortunately didn’t have any sudden ripening events through August as I believe a lot of those 2026 truffles had rotted or stopped growing prior to the season even starting. Which highlights the importance of soil moisture monitoring throughout the year to either; correct areas of dry soil or even more importantly to visit your farm after a large down pour of rain to see which areas have poor drainage and rectify this as soon as possible. The spring rains is a perfect time to do this as the 2027 truffles haven’t started growing yet. However, if you discover poor draining areas in April/May every down pour which has occurred since October last year those 2027 truffles have been trying to survive and the fungus itself is trying to survive in poor oxygen conditions.
Keep an eye out for the overall 2026 truffle season summary.
