The sun bathes a corner table at Habitat restaurant, where two brothers, bestowed with copious amounts of curly hair, recount stories of long summer afternoons in the woods of Pennsylvania. They are mushroom foragers, working under the name Wild Purveyors, and several of the menu items at this fine dining restaurant feature ingredients they picked themselves.

Tom Patterson went to Penn State University for mushroom science technology. He and his brother, Cavan, had been interested in wild growth since they were boys, having grown up on 17 acres in Indiana Township.

Tom took a job with Environmental Microbiology Laboratory, an indoor quality facility that tests environmental samples for fungal content. There, he mastered his skill of identifying fungi by spores. When the company wanted to move him out of the region, Tom vied for the chance to stay in Pennsylvania. That’s when Wild Purveyors was born.

The brothers’ decision was marked by a stroke of luck: They happened upon a clearing of Chanterelles and foraged for two full days, collecting nearly 100 pounds of mushrooms.

“I called the chefs I knew, and they referred me to some other chefs,” Cavan says. “In another two days, we had sold all of them.”

It is illegal to forage in a public park or forest. Instead, the Pattersons have developed relationships with farmers who have extra acreage of back woods. Today, Wild Purveyors has about 6,000 acres at their disposal.

But why don’t the farmers forage themselves? “Farmers have plenty of stuff to do,” Tom says. “They don’t have the time to run around and look for mushrooms. If they have Morels growing, they’ll say, ‘Bring us some if you find some.’” Western Pennsylvania boasts a humid continental climate, ideal for mushroom growth. Chanterelles, for example, thrive on cool summer nights and foggy mornings, typical to those surrounding the Pittsburgh region. But the 12 varietals that Wild Purveyors forage for each have their own season. And March marks the beginning of mushrooms.

“March is the new year,” Cavan says. “This is when we start making plans for where we’re going to go.”

They have to get the mushrooms at the right time. Once the mushrooms get to be a certain size, the fibers get tougher, nearly inedible. A mushroom is never too big to eat, but it can be too old. Everything the Pattersons deliver is fresh, delivered within 48 hours of being picked.

There are a many species of poisonous mushrooms in Western Pennsylvania, and Tom is an expert at spotting them. “We’ll have a nice big patch of Chanterelles, and if you’re just picking through a patch, you might toss it into your bag,” he says. “And it’s just one mushroom in the bunch. A lot of times, when I’m weighing the mushrooms, I’ll notice a small mushroom that I never saw, and I pick it out. It happens too easily, and it’s not worth the risk.”

While poisonous mushrooms can cause anything from discomfort to death, Tom says they’re easy to pick out. “The good thing about most of the classic culinary mushrooms is that they really don’t have any poisonous look-alikes,” he says. “The Chanterelles closest looka-alike is the Jack-o-lantern mushroom, and the shape and color are similar, but the Jack-o-lantern’s just gigantic.” Cavan advises that foraging is like any skill: It just takes education and practice. “If you’re going to go out and learn how to rock climb, you’re not just going to get on a cliff face and start climbing without instruction, proper safety gear, so on and so forth,” he says. “If you do, you die, you know? So, with anything in nature, you want to know what you’re doing before you actually embark upon that journey.”

The guys say that most foragers, even recreational, only lack confidence. “You look at a book, and you see a picture, and they have good descriptions,” Tom says. “But then you go in the woods, and you find a mushroom. It probably is that mushroom, but a lot of times, people don’t actually have the confidence to consume it. The confidence that I got was actually by having a mentor. I had several mentors assure me that, ‘Yes, this mushroom is the one you’re looking at in the book.’ You need that.”

But poisonous mushrooms are not the only threat in the woods. Both men talk about run-ins with big bears and rattlesnakes, and they call poison ivy “an occupational hazard.”

But they carry walkie talkies, since sometimes they can get separated by up to a quarter mile, and communicate about any threat of danger.

The guys also have sustainability in mind. They each carry foraging knives to cut the mushrooms at the base, leaving the roots intact. They also tote their finds in mesh bags to spread the spores as they’re traveling through the woods.

And Wild Purveyors is not just foraging for mushrooms. Tom and Cavan work with more than 30 sustainable farms to source 14 varieties of poultry, grass-fed beef, elk, venison, bison, lamb, goat, four types of stream-raised trout, aged raw milk cheeses, and a wide variety of vegetables, greens, herbs, and seasonal fruits. They have an e-mail list of about 35 chefs, who get first dibs on their finds. They say that about 10 buy from them weekly, but they like to give everyone a heads up about what’s to come. “I’ll tell them, like, ‘We’re seeing the first signs of Morels, and we’re expecting them probably two weeks from now. Look out for rain, because rain is really going to help the mushrooms’ growing.’”

One of their loyal chefs connected the Wild Purveyors with Chef Andrew Morrison, when he opened Habitat restaurant at Fairmont Pittsburgh. “He didn’t seem interested at all,” Cavan says, “and the next day, we got a huge order from him.”

Morrison builds his menu around what the guys can bring him. The chef has a sort of stern air about him, but you can tell he’s happy with the relationship. “They’re so passionate about what they do,” Morrison says. “I mean, that’s really the key to having a good relationship with any of the purveyors. When you work with people who are passionate about what they do, you know they’re going to do a great job for you.”

The guys describe days when the picking is rough: They drive out several hours to a spot and spend a day in the woods, without finding much of anything. So, does this put pressure on a chef, who is utilizing those ingredients?

“It’s more pressure because it’s more precious,” Morrison says. “Someone’s putting in more time and effort to find the mushrooms. But I think, overall, we sort of have a more holistic approach in the kitchen, and we try to have that sort of respect for all of our ingredients — especially the local stuff that we buy.”

His respect for their ingredients goes a long way — because what happens when there’s not enough quail or trout or morels to go around?

“I like to think I’m special,” Morrison says. And he tries to supress a smile.

Table Terroir, tableterroir.com. Wild Purveyors, wildpurveyors.  com. Habitat Restaurant, 510 Market St., Downtown. 412.773.8848. www.habitatrestaurant.com