If you didn’t know, fall is the ideal time for mushroom harvesting in the Pacific Northwest. What better way to honor this than with a mushroom festival, such as Mount Pisgah’s annual event held this year on Oct. 26?
“Fall is one of the best times for mushroom harvesting. If you can hear the rain right now, you can also hear the mushrooms growing,” Audric Macone, an employee at a mushroom farm called The Mushroomery, said. “Oregon is the perfect place for mushrooms with the elevation, the Cascades, humidity and rain — mushrooms love the wet.”
Since 1981, Mount Pisgah has put on the mushroom festival on the last Sunday of every October.
“It’s the flip side celebration to the Wildflower Festival,” Ilana Jakubowski, executive director of Mount Pisgah, said. The Wildflower Festival is held every May to celebrate the new season of wildflowers.
Everything from classic cremini mushrooms you can find at the store, to common PNW species like Russula Turci, Flaming Yellow Pholiota, Purple Gray Mycena and more were on display nestled in moist tanbark.
“We have one of the largest mushroom displays on the West Coast, with over 300 species of mushroom on display inside our pavilion,” Jakubowski said.
The festival featured an array of local bands like Ruzha Rukuru Marimba and Ballet Folklorico Colibri, along with food trucks serving festive delights like mushroom soup and cider, their annual scarecrow contest and hourly mushroom education presentations.
Macone helped to lead Mushroomery’s “how to grow your own mushrooms” presentation. Located in Lebanon, Oregon, Mushroomery is a family owned mushroom farm that grows gourmet and medicinal mushrooms.
For the presentation, Mushroomery demonstrated how to grow your own Oyster mushrooms at home, with just a piece of cardboard and coffee grounds.
“It’s one of those funny things. I feel like people who are into mushrooms are really into mushrooms. When you go down the rabbit hole learning more about mushrooms, they really are incredible. There’s a whole range of benefits,” Jakubowski said.
What started out as a day full of a symphony of rainstorms, abruptly turned into a game of tug of war for the sunshine and a muggy atmosphere — the ideal environment for mushrooms.
For a town known for its eclectic arts and culture scene, the annual mushroom festival is a strong testament to Eugene’s history, nature and tight-knit community. Coincidentally, the festival happened to fall at the end of University of Oregon’s Grateful Dead-themed football game weekend, further acknowledging Eugene’s eclectic, good-natured community.
