photo by Rachel Funk
HARDWICK – Mushroom identification and foraging was the subject of Malaky Downing’s presentation “Foraging for Mushrooms with Malaky” at the Jeudevine Memorial Library last week, on Tuesday. His presentation was one of the September youth events at the library.
Malaky said he’s learned what he knows about mushrooms by reading a lot of books and by foraging locally, near his rural, off-grid home in South Walden.
His talk was accompanied by pictures of mushrooms, with common edible local ones being lobsters and chanterelles, he said. He’s recently found morels here too, showing pictures of them and poisonous false morels, which they might be confused with.
Malaky called himself an intermediate forager, saying he’s made some mistakes as he’s learned about mushrooms.
The most important thing he’d hoped to convey to those who attended his talk was, “Mushrooms can kill you.”
Malaky was “knowledgeable, well-prepared and funny,” said Norma Spaulding, who attended the talk.
Following a cooking class at the library, during which Malaky shared some of his experience with cooking and eating mushrooms, he said Youth Librarian Rachel Funk suggested he give a talk on the subject. With that encouragement, he set about planning the talk and made an outline.
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
