A variety of events will celebrate the magic of mushrooms in Sicamous this weekend with the 19th annual Fungi Festival.
The toadstool tradition will take place Friday, Sept. 20 to Sunday, Sept. 22 with full days of educational walks, talks, demonstrations and displays. As in the past, the daily format will start with a long, foraging walk led by a mushroom expert, with pre-registration required, followed by a short walk and different presentations in the afternoons. The topics of those include micro-dosing, medicinal uses, cooking with mushrooms and more.
The Sicamous Legion will serve as festival headquarters, with displays available upstairs and experts on hand to answer questions and help identify spore specimens. Friday night will also feature the Farmers鈥� Market in the parking lot with live music by In My Orange Kitchen from 4 to 7 p.m., and the Blind Bay Blues Band inside from 8 p.m. til closing.
New this year is the inaugural Sicamous Harvest Festival that will be held in conjunction with the Fungi Fest on the Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at The Hub on Finlayson Street. That will feature a farmers鈥� market, family games, workshops, live music, kids鈥� karaoke, a scavenger hunt and and seasonal foods like corn on the cob, fresh pressed apple juice and pie by the slice.
There is also a number of artistic angles to the festival this year, with submissions from the Fungi Art Contest on display at the legion from Friday afternoon to Saturday, and a regional aspect with the Salmon Arm Art Gallery's Fantastic Fungi exhibition running throughout the month. The show features mushroom themed pieces, and a by-donation fungi ID session with local expert Mitch Milgram 鈥� who will also be at the festival 鈥� at the gallery from 6 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 8.
The full schedule of events, expert biographies, registration and other fungi information can be found on the website at .
