FFSC Events Archive

Mushroom Medicine: Latest News, Product Controversies, and Uses

Author of the groundbreaking text, Medicinal Mushrooms, Dr. Hobbs will discuss the historical and modern uses of fungi for medicine, and their place in modern integrative health and medicinal practices. Discover how mushrooms work to activate our immune responses. A thorough and succinct review of the science and traditional use of the most widely-researched medicinal mushrooms (especially turkey tails, shiitake, cordyceps, maitake, and chaga), based on many years of on-going clinical practice will be presented.

Discover the health-promoting benefits of eating mushrooms regularly, including their nutritional and medicinal value.

A special emphasis will be placed on how to collect or purchase fruiting bodies and make the best extracts and preparations at home. Recipes will also be shared.

Refreshments will be provided and informal mushroom ID will be available from 7:00 - 7:30. A discussion of upcoming events will precede our speaker.

William 'Evergreen' Goss is finishing his second year as a grower for Monterey Mushrooms Inc. at one of the largest organic farms in the industry. He is improving production and sustainability through experimental design, data analysis, and his passion for mycology, which started as a youth in the Pacific Northwest. William graduated from UC Davis with a degree in Plant Genetics and a minor in Fungal Biology and Ecology. He worked for a year in a plant pathology lab, researched nematodes and mycorrhizae at the Agriculture Sustainability Institute, and lived in cooperatives. William worked at two Santa Cruz mountain outdoor schools as a naturalist and gardener. He supports the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz, and is involved in pollinator advocacy through pesticide policy reform.

Bio-remediation is an emerging, multi-disciplinary field, full of challenges and promise. Our exposure to industrial pollution and toxins are increasing in our everyday environment. Together, we will dive into the history, present day, and the future of applied research in myco, bacterial, and phytoremediation. Utilizing a diversity of enzymatic functions, plants, fungi, and bacteria alike, can successfully degrade, hyperaccumulate, and remove many anthroprogenic contaminants. Citing both small and large scale projects from around the world, we will learn what we can do as a local community to support a healthier environment

We are partnering with the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History.

Join for a fun night of music, food, drinks and education!

Educators throughout the eventing chatting about local foraging and fermenting. Education partners include: California Native Plant Society of Monterey Bay, Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz, Big Sur Foragers Festival, and Happy Girl Kitchen.

Custom foraged or fermented cocktails by The Drink Mixtress will excite your taste buds! Local wines from Flywheel Wines and District 7, and beer from Alvarado Brewing Company will also be available.

For more info about this foray, visit the Alaska Long-Distance Foray page.

Join Bill and Jerri White at their Alaska Sports Lodge for the highly popular Alaska Foray.

Theme for the foray, courtesy of phenomenal photographer and bon vivant Hugh Smith. It is sung to the tune of North to Alaska by Johnny Horton. Check https://youtu.be/JSt0NEESrUA for the melody, then sing Hugh's new, improved version:

Dennis Desjardin, Professor of Mycology at San Francisco State University, offers this fantastic class annually. With assistance from his super-knowledgeable grad students, Dennis provides a week-long examination of the spring mycoflora of the Sierra. Students are presented both an overview and the the finer points of identification, including the use of the microscope, various reagents. This is a great introduction and a good way to up your ID skills. You'll meet fellow fungiphiles from different areas and have a great time in a beautiful place. Details follow below.

And...FFSC offers scholarships! Our Minister of Education, Jeanne Gonda, administers funds to cover costs of registration for the class. The student would cover their camping/dining fees. We hope that those who attend would then be equipped to give us a hand at the ID table at the Fair and other events. This is a great opportunity to expand your own knowledge and be a resource for the community as well.

General Description:

Students will be introduced to the different kinds of mushrooms and other large fungi that occur in the spring in the Sierra Nevada (See SNFC species list). Emphasis will be placed on the analysis of macro- and micromorphological features, as well as ecological roles, to aid in the identification of taxa.

The daily class routine consists of an 8 -10 a.m. lecture followed by a field trip until approx. 3 p.m. Transportation on the field trips will be by car pooling. Upon return to the camp, collections will be examined and identified in the laboratory (3:30-6 p.m.) in collaboration with the instructor and a knowledgeable graduate student assistant. All equipment, microscope slides, cover slips and reagents required for accurate determination of specimens will be provided. In the evenings, several lectures and slide shows will be presented and the laboratory will be open for additional work on collections. If sufficient quantities of edible fungi are collected, they will be prepared for consumption and served to the class by the camp's chef.

Class Schedule

Participants should plan to arrive Sunday afternoon in time to attend an orientation lecture on Sunday evening at 8 p.m. The last class meeting ends 12 p.m., Friday.

Supplies and Other Useful Items

FIELD EQUIPMENT

• Collecting basket

• Wax paper

• Sturdy knife

• A small hand cultivator or garden trowel (for digging truffles)

• A 10X hand lens

REQUIRED TEXTBOOK

• California Mushrooms: The Comprehensive Identification Guide, by D.E. Desjardin, M.G. Wood and F.A. Stevens, Timber Press, 2015. Order at Timber Press or Amazon. The instructor will have copies available for purchase at SNFC.

Camping gear

• Warm sleeping bag

• Flashlight or headlamp

• Alarm clock

• Camp chair

• Bring your own tent or use tents with beds provided at the field campus

Clothing 

Days are warm, even hot, while evenings are quite cold (close to freezing). Clothing that can be layered for variable weather conditions is best. T-shirts and shorts or lightweight pants are often perfect during the day, with a wind jacket or raincoat as backup. Long pants, warmer shirts and sweaters with a coat are necessary in the evening. Sturdy hiking shoes/boots and comfortable shoes for around camp, sun hat, wool hat and gloves are all important. A swimsuit may come in handy.

Get more info on the Suds n Shrooms page.

Cat Adams earned her BS at the University of Washington, in Biology, with emphasis on Ecology and Evolution. As an undergrad she worked in Joshua Tewksbury’s lab, studying why wild Bolivian chili peppers produce spice. Cat then earned her Master’s degree at Harvard University in Anne Pringle’s lab, researching the fungal pathogens of wild chili peppers, and how the fungi evolved tolerance to spice. Now earning her PhD at Berkeley, Cat is studying the invasion ecology of the poisonous death cap mushroom, Amanita phalloides. In addition to her research, Cat is passionate about communicating science to the public, and has written for Slate. She was the Communication Chair of the Mycological Society of America Student Section for two years, and is the President and Founder of the Unconscious Bias Project at Berkeley.

If time permits, she will give a 5 minute talk on bioluminescent mushrooms in Costa Rica if anyone is interested.

Find out more on our Wine & Mushrooms Event page.

Join the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz and Mycopigments for a day exploring the full spectrum of permanent color found in the mushrooms and lichens of Northern California. We will extract dye from 10 or more species of mushrooms and lichens, creating a palette of over 20 colors!

All supplies provided: You needn’t bring any supplies to class; wool samples and silk scarves will be provided. You will receive a complimentary silk scarf to practice a demonstrated dye resist technique.

Take home: In this class you will learn about mushroom safety, identification basics, and habitats. You will also learn about the importance of ethical harvest, especially pertaining to lichen dyes. At the end of the day you will take home a detailed recipe card, showcasing a rainbow of samples dyed in class; a beautiful hand dyed scarf; a procedural handout to guide your future exploration, and a customized guide to the best local dye fungi.

Personal fiber: If you’d like to dye your own fiber, there may be extra time. Please know there will be limited colors for this; usually gold and green. Only bring scoured protein fiber (ie wool, silk, alpaca etc), measured and secured in bundles of 30g or less. If working with raw fiber, please bring a small garment bag to contain your fluff. There may be leftover dye available for sharing between those who are interested. Bring some canning jars with lids, empty jugs or small buckets, if you’d like to take some home.

Most activities will be done indoors, so dress in comfortable layers. All supplies will be provided, but there will be a larger community dye pot of yellow and or green dye for a small personal item. Feel free to bring a light weight (1-2oz) un-dyed wool or silk item for the big pot. Un-dyed silk scarves will be available for $5 in class.

Mycopigments is a term Alissa coined to describe the colorful dyes found within the flesh of certain fungi and lichens. It’s also the name of her education based business. She offers classes, lectures and interactive presentations on working with, and recognizing the wild mushrooms and lichens that can be used for dyes.

Alissa has been looking at mushrooms most of her life, having studied mycology for almost 20 years, and has been sharing her passion for mushroom dyes for over 15 years! This unique set of interests has led her to a very interesting career path. Her focus is studying regional mycoflora and utilizing the colorful dyes to entice people to pay closer attention to the role fungi play in our lives; from being a necessary yet understudied part of our ecosystem, to a colorful addition to our wardrobes, to the bonding that foraging brings to families, friends and communities. Nothing brings her more joy than to share this with others.

Please join us for an amazing and inspiring evening!

Michael Beug is Professor Emeritus of The Evergreen State College and an award-winning photographer. His talk is titled, Hallucinogenic Mushrooms as Entheogens - The use of Psilocybin Mushrooms in Recreation, Mental Health and Spirituality.

In 1957, Life Magazine had an article of R. Gordon Wasson, "The Discovery of Mushrooms that Caused Strange Visions." Wasson’s article introduced Psilocybin mushrooms to North American readers and prompted pilgrimages to Mexico

Michael Beug is Professor Emeritus of The Evergreen State College and an award-winning photographer, with photographs published in roughly 50 books and articles. He is principal author (with Alan and Arleen Bessette) of Ascomycete Fungi of North America: A Mushroom Reference Guide. He writes about mushrooms in McIlvainea, The Mycophile, Fungi Magazine, and Mushroom: The Journal of Wild Mushrooming. He created 25 PowerPoint mushroom programs available through NAMA as a two-DVD set. He is a coauthor of MatchMaker, a free mushroom identification program covering 4,092 taxa with over 5,000 images of 1,984 illustrated taxa (www.matchmakermushrooms.com). He was winner of the 2006 NAMA Award for Contributions to Amateur Mycology. He is chair of the NAMA Toxicology Committee, chair the Editorial Committee and editor of the journal McIlvainea. In the Columbia River Gorge, he currently studies the unique fungal ecosystem associated with Quercus garryana where he has found roughly 50 unnamed Cortinarius species, many unnamed Hebeloma species, new species of Russula, a new Amanita, a new Polyozellus, a new morel and a new Sarcomyxa as well as numerous species previously thought to be restricted to California and Southern Oregon. His hobbies are organic farming and winemaking.

Chef Todd Spanier is founder of California Truffle Orchards LLC. California’s leading truffle farming management company and credited with finding the first farm raised truffles for Sonoma county at Jackson Family Wines on February 17th 2017 with the assistance of Umami Truffle Dogs LLC.

Todd Spanier founded King of Mushrooms in 1996. His passion for mushrooms and wild foods is derived from a close bond he shared with both of his Grandfathers, who frequently brought him mushroom hunting and foraging as a young man. Todd began hunting on his own, and would eventually begin selling mushrooms to many of San Francisco's top restaurants while still in high school. Todd's passion has grown exponentially over the years, and his company has developed into a top sustainable wild food purveyor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Todd's network of family, friends, and fungaioli(mushroom hunters) is what makes King of Mushrooms what it is today.

http://www.kingofmushrooms.com/