Mushroom Harvest Festival

The Mushroom Harvest Festival is an annual festival held in Petalcap Vale's territories to celebrate the harvest season for the Vale's most famous food and building material: tree-sized edible mushrooms. While the name is evocative of a single crop, the Mushroom Harvest Festival is also a prime time for planting pumpkins, squash and other summer vegetables.

History

The antecedents of the Mushroom Harvest Festival go back almost a millenia, with the earliest recorded use of that name appearing around the year 9000 AX in a romance epic entitled Soon, My Dear, Beneath the Starbell Boughs. While the celebration was a near-universal affair in the era before the advent of mechanized farming, the festival remains popular among the agricultural enclaves between the district centers.

Execution

The Mushroom Harvest Festival denotes a time of plenty. During the day, farmers throughout Petalcap Vale pick the largest of Caudal D's native edible fungi, and fell them. Stem material is usually dried and compressed for use as a lumber substitute, while the the majority of the cap is cut into 'steaks' for use as food. When prepared as foodstuffs, these mushroom steaks are notable for their earthy, savory, umami-rich flavor profile, with notes of both portabello and shiitake. Dried mushroom steaks can last months or even years with proper preparation, serving as the basis of Vale Verdial military rations.
At dusk, farm workers gather in market squares to sell the excess mushroom steaks as a major component in various savory dishes, including spicy mushroom curry, meat and mushroom stew, mushroom and vegetable stir fry, and deep-fried mushroom and cheese fingers. As night falls, celebrants play music and dance under gaslight in the market square until the musicians get tired; at the end of the Mushroom Harvest Festival, when all the crops have been brought in and there isn't much work left to do, these nightly celebrations can continue almost until dawn.
The exhaustion, drunkenness, and elation of the Mushroom Harvest Festival is notorious for loosening the inhibitions of the otherwise very conservative Vale Verdial folk. 'Harvest child' is a common Valespeak idiom for an unplanned child created as a result of a Mushroom Harvest Festival rendezvous. A 'harvest child' is a common cause of another Valespeak idiom: a 'shotgun wedding.'

Observance

The Mushroom Harvest Festival happens every year on the 8th of Iksunten, as this represents the end of the spring wet season and beginning of the warmer summer months. The holiday continues for five days, ending on the 13th of the month.

Primary Related Location

Petalcap Vale (municipality)

Related Ethnicities

• Vale Verdial