2023-24 Season

2023-2024 MCMC Monthly Meeting & Event Lineup

General Club meetings - All are welcome.
We’ll socialize and talk mushrooms. If anyone finds any mushrooms, please bring them for show and tell.
All meetings will be held on the second Tuesday, from September through May

Time: 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm

Venue: online via Zoom and in-person. See the meeting dates below for exact location.

September 12: FIRST MEETING OF THE SEASON
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg & Zoom
Meet and greet, and catch up. Talk about ideas and plans for upcoming meetings.

October 10: CLUB MEETING
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg & Zoom
Speaker: Jess Starwood
Topic: To The Ends of the Earth And Back Again—In Search of Fungi and The Best Dining Experience in the World
Jess Starwood, author, herbalist and chef, shares a summer full of mushroom hunting stories from Alaska to Appalachia, Copenhagen to Colorado and everywhere in between—with a five hour lunch at Noma, one of the world’s top “taste of place” restaurants.

November 14: CLUB MEETING - Mushroom Social Potluck & Holiday Marketplace
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg & Zoom
Enjoy some potluck snacks and beverages, socialize, and do some holiday shopping.

December 12: CLUB MEETING
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg & Zoom
Speaker: Tom Jelen
Topic: Amanita muscaria - Myths, legends and a cooking/tasting demo
Tom will be doing a workshop on detoxifying and cooking the iconic Amanita muscaria mushroom and discussing some of the myths and legends associated with it. The Amanita muscaria is arguably the most identified mushroom in the world. For years, the mushroom has been demonized and thought to be deadly poison. Amanita muscaria has been called the Santa Claus mushroom, and indeed, it has a long history as a vision quest substance, used by Siberian shamans. It also fruits in large quantities in December here on the Coast, so hopefully we'll have plenty to work with.

January 9: CLUB MEETING
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg & Zoom
Speakers: Alan Rockefeller
Topic: Mushrooms of Ecuador and more…
Alan Rockefeller spent 5 weeks during the Spring of 2023 in the Ecuadorian Amazon documenting fungi. This presentation highlights the most interesting, beautiful and unusual finds and will give some insight into what it is like to look for mushrooms in this beautiful country. Alan will also talk about the work he and other community scientists do to identify mushrooms at the DNA level and show you some ways to contribute to the effort.
Meeting Recording

January 10: FORAY!!! - MCMC-JDSF sponsored foray
Our guest speaker, Alan Rockefeller, will join JDSF forestry personnel along with MCMC club members to lead guided walks in Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF). All are welcome.
Location: Caspar Scales-JDSF (click here for a map)
Time: 9:30-3:30 - meet up at Caspar Scales at 9:30 groups will start heading into the forest around 9:45 so don't be late!
IMPORTANT: You MUST bring your JDSF mushroom permit to pick any mushrooms.

February 13: CLUB MEETING
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Brag & Zoom
Speaker: Art Goodtimes
Topic: Shrooming from the Pacific Coast to the Rocky Mountains: How mushrooms led me from the altar of Catholicism to the church of the Great Outdoors and into the arms of Entheogenic awareness
I will be tracking my journey from neophyte pothunter with the San Francisco Mycological Society to tripping hippie in the urban wilds of the Haight-Ashbury to poet-in-residence of the Telluride Mushroom Festival. We’ll be touching on Manny Salzman, Gary Lincoff, Andy Weil, Paul Stamets, Dolores LaChapelle and the wildest mushroom parade in America.
Meeting Recording

March 12: CLUB MEETING
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg & Zoom
Speakers: Billy Sprague
Topic: Get Ready for Morel Season
With all the recent snow, morel season may be a bit later this year, but weather in the mountains in highly unpredictable, so if it's morels that you're after, you need to start mapping out a plan to be ready when it happens. Billy has been successfully hunting morels for the past eight years in California, Oregon, Idaho and his native Michigan, and will share his thoughts and tips for how to hunt for these delectable and elusive morsels.
What he'll cover in the talk:
* morel hunting near and/or far
* when to go look, timing!
* how to read weather and temp patterns
* soil temps
* where to look
* how to find environment: trees, temps, skids, micro climates etc...
* where to stay
* permits and laws around collecting
* burns vs. naturals
* what to bring
* how to pick, store and dry
* other indicator fungal species to be aware of.
* other edible species often in the same area
* how to respectfully share and request tips from others about morel fruiting
Meeting Recording - Part 1
Meeting Recording - Part 2

April 9: CLUB MEETING
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg & Zoom
Speakers: Lama Nasser-Gammett
Topic: Local Mushroom Cultivation: The Forest People
Mushroom cultivation can provide large quantities of nutritionally dense food with very few inputs. This can be done in a small space with relatively little water usage on a number of different substrates.
With the climate challenges our world is currently facing, it is imperative that we disengage from the exploitative agricultural system, instead looking for local, sustainable ways to nourish our bodies.
Lama will share her family’s story as The Forest People, a small-scale oyster mushroom cultivation business that’s grown thousands of pounds of mushrooms for their community.

May 14: LAST CLUB MEETING OF THE SEASON
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg
Topic: Potluck Party & Mushroom Marketplace!

2023-2024 Speaker Profiles

Jess Starwood

Jess Starwood is an established author, chef, herbalist and educator. She holds a Masters of Science degree in Herbal Medicine and Holistic Nutrition.
In 2021, she wrote and photographed her first book, Mushroom Wanderland: A Forager’s Guide to Finding, Identifying and Using More Than 25 Wild Fungi. She also writes regularly for Edible Ojai & Ventura County, Edible San Fernando, and Enchanted Living magazines as well as The Mycophile—the publication of the North American Mycological Association (NAMA).
Jess founded The Wild Path School where she teaches foraging, wild foods, herbalism and nature education classes for adults and children. She is a member of the Culinary Committee for NAMA and is on the board of directors for the Arizona Mushroom Society and the newsletter editor for the Los Angeles Mycological Society. She has also worked as a wild food consultant and forager for Michelin starred chefs Niki Nakayama and Aitor Zabala. Jess has been featured in National Geographic, The Guardian, and the Orange County Register.

Tom Jelen

Tom Jelen has been a forager all his life. He grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, where he graduated from UWEC in Social Work. Tom lived in the small town of Ellsworth, Wisconsin as a kid. His family had a cottage on Lake Pepin where her foraged for berries and wild nuts, but was barred from picking mushrooms, as his mother was sure it would kill him. He started hunting mushrooms when he moved to Fort Bragg in 2005 and has been an avid forager ever since. He has had the great good fortune to call David Arora a friend and has foraged with him many times.
Tom took the reins as Chair of the MCMC a year into the pandemic and has been trying to keep the Club together and bring interesting experts to speak to and do events with mushroom experts from all over.

At The December meeting, we will be demystifying the Amanita muscaria mushroom with a hands-on cooking demo and tasting. The mushrooms will be thoroughly detoxified, and we'll put some out for folks to try. This is a technique that I learned from David Arora, who, as with many things, pioneered the expansion and the understanding of the Amanita muscaria mushroom. Here is a link to the published paper by David and his friend and colleague William Rubel:
A Study of Cultural Bias in Field Guide Determinations of Mushroom Edibility Using the Iconic Mushroom, Amanita muscaria, as an Example.

Alan Rockefeller

Alan roams the globe studying mushrooms—has microscope; will travel. Based out of Oakland, CA, Alan does DNA sequencing, photography, identification for iNaturalist (44,000 IDs in 2020!) and is also one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet concerning psilocybe mushrooms and their distribution.

Much of his photography is on display in Mushroom Observer and iNaturalist, as well as on his Facebook page, along with lots for great tips on how to photograph mushrooms and advice on gear. You'll also find links to his published articles.

Art Goodtimes

Having studied to be a Roman Catholic priest for seven years (1959-1966), Art Goodtimes left the seminary, did two years alternative service as a VISTA volunteer on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana, worked as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, graduated from San Francisco State in English in 1970, and started hunting edible mushrooms as a member of the San Francisco Mycological Society.

Dropping out of graduate school and turning on to the magic of shrooms, he taught pre-school for ten years and went from mainstream Catholic to radical street poet with the Cloud House Poetry Center. In 1980 he moved to Colorado, met Dr. Emanuel Salzman and helped organize Wild Mushrooms Telluride, which became the Telluride Mushroom Festival (1981-present).

Over 43 years he has managed operations for the fest, been the director, the poet-in-residence and the parade leader. Currently he serves on the Board of Trustees of the Telluride Institute that runs the festival and has recently become facilitator for the festival's new management group called Team Mushroom. He was Western Slope (Colorado) Poet Laureate (2011-13) and served five terms (20 years) as Colorado's only Green Party county commissioner (supervisor). His website is <goodtimespoet.blogspot.com>

Billy Sprague

BILLY SPRAGUE is a local here in Fort Bragg, CA and member of the MCMC since it’s inception. Around that time Sprague became an avid mushroom hunter pooling expertise from our club's members, Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast book and seasoned hunting mentors. Sprague curated a world of fungi around him by infusing them into his art, diet and social practices—using mushroom illustrations from vintage mushroom books to create collage works, creating a mushroom foraging knife and brush combination that enhances the harvesting process and creating a forage friendly “Shroom Shack” for fellow mushroom and foraging enthusiasts who visit the Mendocino Coast area. Shroom Shack is used as a home base and place to share and trade foraging tips and current intel on what's happening in the surrounding forests.

He sells his fresh and dried mushrooms to locals who can’t get into the woods or don’t have the time to hunt them down, often swapping forage stories and recipes along the way. Sprague also leads forays focusing on edible, medicinal and dye mushrooms and proper harvest and woodland etiquette procedures.

Lama Nasser-Gammett

Lama Nasser-Gammett is owner/operator of The Forest People, a small-scale mushroom farm in Mendocino County that she and her husband Matthew began in 2018. She has been cultivating mushrooms for over 10 years as part of a larger picture of subsistence farming and regenerative ag.

Her fascination with fungi began with her discovery that mycelium is everywhere in nature and has the ability to communicate with and influence its local environment.

Lama is a Board member of the Mendocino Organic Network, and has been an active organizer for the Anderson Valley Foodshed and the Not-So-Simple Living Fair.

She and her family have just moved to Fort Bragg from Boonville and are in the process of re-visioning and rebuilding their business in their new community.