Time to take stalk

Put your spore time to good use with a visit to the Yachats Mushroom Festival

By Gretchen Ammerman

Oregon Coast TODAY

Remember when mushrooms were just a vaguely colored topping on salads, pizzas and the occasional pasta? Now, exotic options like lion’s mane to help improve your memory, chaga to improve your immunity and even fungus-based building materials to build your house with are popping up all over.

And though variety might be the spice of life, many mushrooms are deadly. So, if you want to expand your knowledge of mushrooms and mingle with other fungi-philes, there’s no better event than the Yachats Mushroom Festival, happening this Friday, Oct. 20, through Sunday, Oct. 22.

“The festival has not just come out of dormancy,” said Bobbi Price, executive director of the Yachats Chamber of Commerce. “It’s going to be bigger than ever and we have some really cool things happening, starting with a dinner and a keynote speaker.”

The mushroom-themed dinner, on Friday at the Yachats Commons, will include live music by GAEA, followed by the talk from Langdon Cook, author of “The Mushroom Hunters: A Hidden World of Food, Money, and (Mostly Legal) Adventure.”

Members of the Lincoln County Mycological Society will be on hand with large displays of regional mushrooms while other regional mycologists will be available to help identify mushrooms and fungi. There will also be identification books for sale, and other displays for identifying mushrooms. Visitors are encouraged to bring in their own "finds" from their yards and local forests for identification and to add to the displays.

Both Saturday and Sunday will see a full roster of speakers in the commons and other locations throughout town. Meanwhile, the All Mushroom Things-Artists, Cultivators, Creators, Gatherers Fair will take place in the Yachats Commons Multi-Purpose Room. Restaurants throughout the town will feature mushroom specialty dishes and hikes will be on offer in area forests. All festival walks are led by professional and amateur mycologists, forest ecologists and naturalists, are one to two hours long and are held on excellent, easy trails in the spectacular coastal mature and old-growth forest at Cape Perpetua or Gerdemann Botanical Preserve.

“We’ve got some really well respected and well-known speakers like Dr. Charles Lefevre, president and founder of New World Truffieres,” Price said. “There will also be the ‘Mushroom Cafe’ hosted by Beach Daisy Wines in the big Yachats Commons kitchen, where people can sit, sip and enjoy small bites or mingle. We’ll even have kids’ mushroom art, a log inoculating workshop and a truffle dog demonstration. The vending area will have some absolutely amazing artists with some of the cutest things from hats to jewelry, decor, mugs and more. And I love that there is something for people at every level of expertise, including total novices. It will be a really fungi weekend.”

A new fun activity during festival weekend is the Indoor Mushroom Treasure Hunt, where glass and porcelain mushrooms created by local artists Rasa Clay Works and Paris Birdwell will be hidden in participating stores and galleries. Once you find the hidden mushroom, the store will give you a form to fill out, entering you into a drawing to win that very piece of original art.

Participating locations are Touchstone Gallery, Judith Kitchen Tools, Midtown Guitar, Toad Hall, Yachats Chamber Visitor Center, Peephole Gallery, Styx, Stones & Bones, Yachats Mystic Antiques, Le Stelle Gallery, SeaNote Restaurant and Bar, Beach Daisy Wine and Yachats Mercantile.

Can’t make it to Yachats this weekend? Don’t despair, the hunt for glass and porcelain mushrooms will move to the beaches and woods for the Outdoor Mushroom Treasure Hunt, running through March 2.

Every Saturday, “Trail Gnomes” will set out and hide treasure, with clues to the locations being posted on Yachats Area Chamber of Commerce social media sites each Friday. And with this hunt, what you find you keep, no raffle required.

For more information on the festival or links for the outdoor hunt, go to yachats.org.