The International Mushroom Festival runs 
over Saturday 12th & Sunday 13th October 2013
Mushroom experts and mushroom lovers from all over the world will gather to the beautiful, centuries-old, Killegar Estate in County Leitrim to exchange scientific knowledge and celebrate our natural environment over the weekend of the 12th October, 2013.

For the third successive year, this festival involves experts from Ireland, UK, Germany, Italy, Poland and the US, who aim to advance the understanding of Ireland's ecology and biodiversity with a special emphasis on the “Kingdom of Fungi“. This year the festival welcomes "Mushroom Garden", a commercial mushroom production company based in Bangladesh who are keen to visit Ireland to study cultivation methods employed here and learn more about our wild mushrooms.

The Irish Mycologist's Society and the Northern Ireland Fungus Group, having to date identified more than 300 species, will introduce mushroom enthusiasts to an exceptionally large variety of Ireland's fungi this year as Autumn 2013 promises to produce a bumper crop.

Get to know all about Irish mushrooms and foraging

Amongst other things, festival goers will learn about the most common species, both edible and poisonous. As well as guided forays the programme offers a comprehensive range of talks, natural history-related displays and exhibitions.

For younger festival goers, the OWLS - Outdoor Wildlife Learning and Survival Nature Club will provide an educational programme about the natural world.

Sligo Chef Joe Shannon will be demonstrating how to cook with wild mushrooms

Joe Shannon, Executive Head Chef of the Radisson Blu Hotel in Sligo, will present cookery demonstrations showing foragers how to transform freshly gathered wild mushrooms into inspired dishes. Further delicious samplings will be available at the festival Food Fair of locally sourced produce. The fair will also showcase a variety of wood-turning, hand crafted jewellery, quilt-making and more.

All proceeds go to the 'Save Killegar Campaign', set up to preserve Killegar as one of Ireland's and Europe's last remaining heritage houses, its native woodlands and sanctuary for wildlife.

For more details see www.internationalmushroomfestival.com and check out their Facebook Page HERE

For more from Zack see www.IrishFoodGuide.ie