“Now that’s an orange milky cap!” – a regional festival
In the old Verkh-Yusva village in the Kudymkar district there is an annual traditional autumn folk festival of the Komi-Permyaks called "Now that’s an orange milky cap!". It’s the only festival in Russia dedicated to mushrooms. Its main character is saffron, one of the most popular mushrooms in the Kama region. Its main character is an orange milky cap which is still one of the most popular sorts of mushrooms in the Kama region.
Saffron milk caps became a symbol of a national holiday not by accident. There always were a lot of these solar mushrooms in the woods. "Going mushrooming is like mowing the grass" - the locals say. For the Komi-Permyaks mushrooms are the meat analogue. Therefore, people have always valued the skills of mushroom gathering and making mushroom pickles.
The Komi-Perm festival "Now that’s an orange milky cap!" brings together creative teams of the Perm region, whose performances are full of the various motives of the autumn rituals. The performances have the common theme - farewell to summer, withering of nature, the end of the field works.
The festival has been held since 2004. There is also a literary contest about orange milky caps, folk games and dances dedicated to the incoming of autumn, a mushroom themed drawing contest, the most productive mushroom picker award, literary and artistic competitions " The ode to the orange milky cap", a competition for the most delicious pickles and a mushroom fair.
A holiday cannot do without traditional national drinks: the Komi-Permyak kvass and beer (welded according to ancient recipes in the Russian stove).
However, the Komi-Permyak holiday is devoted not only to mushrooms. It also the holiday of ginger people. The ginger are solar, good-natured people, and among Komi-Permyaks there is a lot of red-haired people. In the first year only the residents of the Upper Yusva village took part in the festival, but now this holiday became regional.
People come from the most remote corners of the region to try delicious saffron milk caps. The organizers the festival didn’t expect it to outgrow the scales of Komi-Permyak Region and turn into an interregional festival attracting to Upper Yusva people from around the Perm Region. It attracts creative teams from Nytvenskiy, Oktyabrskiy, Karagaiskiy, Krasnokamskiy, Sivinskiy, Perm and other regions showing common traditions. Every year, the organizers say, there are more and more guests. Therefore, perhaps, the following crop of saffron milk caps will be celebrated not in Upper Yusva but in Kudymkar.
Address: Verkh-Yusva village, Kudymkar