With the 2012 season finally coming to a close, let’s take a look back on all of this year’s happenings. As usual, Amateur Mycology was extremely busy with all of our usual projects this summer. We were also booked most of the season with Mycotours, our sister company, that provides private guided mushroom foraging with expert guides in beautiful locations across the United States. On these tours, guests learn to identify and use wild mushrooms and plants, all while exploring these outdoor locations. These hikes usually range from a walk in town, to a strenuous hike through the mountains, with an emphasis on the ecosystem’s flora. We also offer cook and tastes and lunch on a private chef basis. For more information on our tours, or to schedule an expedition, visit Mycotours.com.

Amateur Mycology attended the 2012 Telluride Mushroom Festival again this year, and all of our seminars were a major success. Bert Matthews, James Weiser, and I gave hands on demonstrations in our mobile laboratory  and did several classes about various sterile lab techniques. This also included cloning many of the mushrooms from the identification table as well! Bert also exhibited his Pleurotus mushroom sculptures to all of the class attendees. I gave a lecture entitled, “Mycophagy: the culture of eating fungi” in the Elks Lodge this year. I covered several interesting topics including information about many of the different types of edible mushrooms from around the world and their cultural uses, as well as delved into the many aspects of fermentation with fungi. We talked about fermentation with the fungi molds, but also talked about using the macro fungi to ferment food products as well (I will be writing an article about this topic soon). We also discussed the many meanings of the word ‘culture’, and how ‘cultures of fungi’ have shaped many human ‘cultures’ across the world.  Lecture attendees also got to look at various fungi growing on petri dishes that I brought with me that are used to ferment food products. These included Aspergillus oryzae (koji/miso/sake), Penicillium roqueforti (blue cheese), Rhizopus oligosporus (tempeh), and Penicillium camemberti (brie/Camembert). Mycotours also competed in the Annual Mushroom Chef Cook-off with our Porcini Sushi Roll with Porcini sauce. It was mentioned in Alisa Geiser’s blog article ‘The Curious Ways We Find Eachother: Day Two at the Telluride Mushroom Festival’ on elephantjournal.com. You can read more about the mushroom cook-off at TellurideInside.com or The Telluride Festivarian. For more information on this year’s Telluride Mushroom Festival, or for info about the event in 2013, visit shroomfest.com. You can also listen to an interview with Scott, the director of the festival on the new radio show I am working on called ‘A Fermented Affair‘! You can find it here, on BlogTalkRadio.com. You can also find Telluride Mushroom Festival and A Fermented Affair on Facebook!

I also presented at Syntonic Music Festival that featured over 40 different electronic music artists and about 20 workshops. I gave a lecture entitled ‘Introduction to Fungi’ where we discussed how mushrooms can be used for more than just a great side dish in a meal, they could maybe help save the planet!! For more information about the 2012 Syntonic workshops or the music artists visit their website at syntonicfest.com.

As always, stay tuned for more pictures and video of these events and information to the upcoming events Amateur Mycology is working on.

We will be hosting a foray this weekend with our friends from the Arkansas Valley Mushroom Club on Saturday, June 12th. The fearless leader of AVMC, Irv Broudy was kind enough to ask us to lead an expedition into the high country to look for snow melt fungi and hopefully find some black morels! We will be gathering at the campground at the top of Kenosha Pass at 10 am and will be driving to our final hunting grounds. If you live in the Salida area, meet at 8:00am at Stop and Shop parking lot in town. For all the folks out in Buena Vista, meet at 8:30 at City Market in case there are people there who need a ride. Since it is a pretty long distance to Kensosha Pass, let’s try and maximize carpooling and chip in for gas for those who drive. If you are coming from Denver and would like to carpool or need directions to the meeting spot, shoot me an email at graham@amateurmycology.com and we will coordinate from there.

Weather conditions have been dry, so it’s likely that we will be looking for shrooms near or at the snow-melt zone, so dress accordingly and bring a lunch. James and I have recently found a few black morels, oysters, and many other snow melt fungi. We have been scouting and will select a specific location to hunt by Saturday. Hope to see you there!

The Colorado Mycological Society has kindly asked James and I to do a foray for the club this Sunday. We will be searching for the often difficult to find Morchella esculenta, popularly known as the Golden or Blonde Morel. This year has been a very interesting year for weather for the front range of Colorado, and due to our great but late rains, the morel season so far has been very hit and miss. Some of the only areas we are finding them held their moisture during the drier part of early May. It is our assumption that this is why they were only in a few areas this year. However, Michael Kuo has a very good section of his book Morels about what he refers to as ‘Morel Theorizing’ where he pokes fun at much of morel hunter ‘science’ and discusses some of the leading ‘theories’ and morel know-how. If you haven’t already, purchase a copy of his book; it is a wealth of information. So, to make a long story shorter, we have no idea if we are going to see blonde morels this weekend. But I know we will have fun looking for (and theorizing about) this amazing fungi.

If you would like to attend this foray, we will be meeting in the Safeway parking lot on 28th and Arapahoe in Boulder Sunday May 22nd @ 9am. If you are a member of the Colorado Mycological Society the foray is free, non-members must make a $5 donation to Colorado Mycological Society. It is well worth it! Support your local mycological society!