To some, mushrooms are more than flavorful fungi. The art of mushroom hunting is a lifestyle favored by many, despite the dangers involved.
Mushroom hunters and farmers alike came together for the 29th annual Mushroom Festival at Mount Pisgah Arboretum. The festival was packed with mushroom lovers admiring the beauty of wild, exotic mushrooms and a few festival-goers were dressed appropriately for Halloween.
At the heart of the festival, there were dozens of long tables covered in bark dust, moss, and an evenly spaced assortment of mushrooms and their labels. One of the mushrooms on display was the candy cap, which tastes like maple syrup when it’s dried and can be great in cookies, pancakes or cheesecake.
Among the various species of chanterelle and coral mushrooms, to name a few, there lay the stories of mushroom hunters and farmers who have devoted a good portion of their lives to perfecting their skills for mushroom harvesting.
Mushrooms
Andy and Sherrie Hansen, who set up a mushroom retail booth at the festival, refer to themselves as “wildcrafters,” meaning they head to the mountains to harvest mushrooms. They often hunt for mushrooms near their home in the coastal town of Yachats to sell at their business, which is appropriately named “The Mushroom People.”
Sherrie, who has been picking mushrooms for 20 years, was inspired to become a part of the mushroom industry after studying forestry and mycology.
A major concern for the Hansens during their mushroom-collecting sprees are bears. They were once chased away by a mother bear who was likely trying to protect her cubs.
Mushroom hunting can also be dangerous because in some areas, since the pickers are territorial, Sherrie said. She has heard of this occurring especially in areas where there is a “mushroom circuit,” for instance, in Chemult, Oregon.
“They’ve actually shot at each other,” Sherrie said.
She compared the mushroom circuit to something out of the old Wild West.
“They camp up there like the old coal miners and they have gambling dens,” Sherrie said. “Everyone lives in a really rustic way. We’re a little bit tamer than that.”
One of the more obvious challenges of mushroom hunting is distinguishing between the edibles and the poisonous mushrooms. According to an old wives tale, mushroom pickers would put a silver dollar into a pot with the mushrooms they were cooking, Sherrie said. If the coin turned black, the mushrooms were poisonous. If the coin remained silver, they would eat the mushrooms.
This method of mushroom identification is not recommended.
Even with a mushroom identification guide, it can still be very difficult to figure out if a mushroom is safe to eat or if it will kill you.
Joe Spivack, a member of the board of directors at the Cascade Mycological Society, said one of the main challenges of identifying mushrooms is due to the great level of variability among mushrooms of the same species.
“Because they only fruit for a small period of the year, you don’t get to look at them like a tree year round and understand them,” Spivack said.
In a famous story of misidentification from the 1970s, an old radical hippie man from Eugene died after eating deadly amanita mushrooms that a friend of his had misidentified as edible puffballs, Spivack said. Others who ate the mushrooms had to have liver transplants.
This past week, a woman from Hood River was hospitalized after eating a poisonous amanita smithiana that she thought was a matsutake mushroom, Spivack said.
Mushroom poisonings are actually not very common, Spivack said. It’s more likely for someone to get lost.
Spivack, a frequent mushroom hunter, was once lost in the woods overnight.
Although the hunt can be risky, many people are willing to take on the challenges because it’s a fun outdoor activity. “It’s like an egg hunt in the woods,” Spivack said.
Farming can be a safer way to harvest mushrooms rather than hunting for them in the wild.
At the festival, the Rain Forest Mushroom Company set up a booth with a selection of their fresh and dried, farm-raised mushrooms. They also sold kits for people to take home and grow their own edible fungi.
Bobby Rudel, whose family owns and operates the company, said it can be challenging to farm mushrooms because nearly all mushrooms are highly condition-sensitive.
“Any misstep in the entire process and we can have a total loss of everything,” Rudel said.
The process of mushroom farming involves packaging the fungi with sawdust and cereal grains for nutrients. Then Rudel said they use a low-pressure autoclave for sterilization. From there they pack the box into an incubation room where the temperature, lighting and air flow is regulated, and they wait for the mycelium to colonize. This can take three or four weeks. At this point the mycelium are usually ready to grow mushrooms, which will take another week or two.
The festival is the perfect place for Rudel’s family to show off the fruits of their hard work to potential customers.
“Everybody is able to see the quality of the product we offer,” Rudel said.
Plant Sale
Aside from mushrooms, the festival also hosts dozens of activities, booths and contests, and an annual plant sale that draws in crowds of gardeners and plant-lovers.
Unlike some other plant sales, the plants sold at the festival are not making their first appearance out in the world after sprouting up from seedling to shrub in a nursery: These plants have already been around the block. They’re all donated from local gardeners who no longer want them.
The proceeds from the sale are donated to the Mount Pisgah Arboretum and used to fund education programs, trail work, guided trail walks, workshops and habitat restoration.
Volunteers were on hand to answer questions about the plants and provide instructions for how to care for them.
Phoebe Staples, an arboretum volunteer who has been helping out since the festival began, said, “We try to give advice along with plants.” Since many of the volunteers have been doing this for years, they know what works, she said.
Katura Reynolds, the office manager at the arboretum, said it’s unpredictable what types of plants they’ll receive.
“Last year there was an amazing amount of decorative kale,” Reynolds said.
Someone else brought in voodoo lilies, which Reynolds said were so cool she was tempted to buy them all herself.
But more than anything else, the plant sale functions as a fun way to bring the community together.
“It gives people a chance to really give back to this natural place that they love so much,” Reynolds said.
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