March 23, 2014 Newsletter

Hello everybody.  Spring is barely in the air (although can’t you just “taste it”!) and the club has so many exciting projects planned for the year, as well as ones coming to fruition.

At our February meeting, Jill led a workshop on mushroom inoculation. We each   prepared a mushroom kit using a simple (non-sterile) recipe. Many of us are enjoying the first fruiting of the oyster mushrooms that we grew using the materials at that workshop. Jill has been collecting data, looking at it how the conditions that we grew our mushrooms affected growth. This information can help us in the future. The workshop was a huge success in many ways and we hope to have more workshops like this.

Our special events continue this week:

Bill Bakaitis will lecture on the topic of safe and unsafe spring mushrooms.  Bill is a professor of mycology, a writer, and founding president of MHMA as well as a contributor to the NY State Museum’s fungi collection. As always, Bill brings a wealth of information to share with club members and we are pleased to have him.

We will also have a brief meeting at which we will hold our annual club elections. As this is an election meeting it is only open to members, but non-members are welcome to join at the meeting. If you act quickly, there is still time to nominate/volunteer for any of our offices. Let Kelly know, ASAP. if you would like to step in and relieve one of our current officers.

I hope that you will take the opportunity to join us for this special lecture and meeting. It will take place on Tuesday, March 25^thpm, at the Marbletown Community Center, 3564 Main St, Stone Ridge, NY.

We will begin promptly at 7PM.

Finally, I am most excited to announce that, thanks to a long team effort, our newly designed website is up and running!!!Ted Shemella has graciously agreed to be our web master. Special thanks to our treasurer, Cynthia Fisher, who coordinated the work to “launch” our website through the final steps.

You can go to MHMA’s site right now at midhudsonmyco.org to see current events, and to get a glimpse of planned ones. With our new design format, we will be able to expand on the current structure, adding new information and links as needed. This will be an on-going   process and leaves us with endless potential for reaching many, informing and educating.

Our members have a wealth of knowledge and varying interests that I hope will be shared on our website. There are so many fascinating aspects of fungi to learn about and share with each other. The list includes identification, uses, ecology, art, book reviews and inoculation, to name a few.

To start, I would like to invite any of our members who would like to write an article about any aspect of fungi that they are interested in- to be posted on our website. I hope to see on-going submissions where we can continually share new information on our website.

The club also welcomes your ideas and participation for future workshops. Let us know if you have ideas and would like to lead a workshop or other event. Right now, Cynthia is planning a wine making workshop which many of you expressed an interest in. I talked to Sheena this week and she would like to teach a basket making workshop this year. Over the past year, many of you have shared your ideas, time, resources, and expertise (in many areas-technical, as well as fungal) to benefit the club, and I thank you. I am looking forward to seeing you all at our many upcoming events and walks.

Yours in “fungal fever”,

Lisa

End of  March 23, 2014 Newsletter