Bay Area & Beyond Foragers - Mushrooms, Plants, Seaweed +

Morels, Porcini & Beyond: Understanding Sierra Ecology

• Please register via our website: www.forkinthepath.org/classes (not on Meetup)

This class is offered:
May 17, 18 & 31
June 1, 7, 8, 14, 15
10am - 2pm
This is NOT a series, each date is a standalone class.

🍄🍄 What You'll Learn
Learning to forage is an ongoing life path that starts with understanding patterns in the habitat around you. Burn zone habitats are unique and delicate. Fire has ripped through the habitat causing massive changes and destruction. But from these ashes, new life emerges.
This will be a special program led by expert naturalist Thea Chesney where we not only look for morels and porcini but also learn to understand the ecology and layers of new life forming beneath our feet that ultimately lead to the regrowth and resilience of the forest.**
This program will teach you foundational skills to be able to go out foraging in burn zones on your own while minimizing your impact on these delicate habitats. We will cover mushroom anatomy for identification, tree and plant identification, poisonous and edible mushrooms, and forest safety.
The program also includes community building, a cooking demo, and a tasting at the end.

Where
The class will happen in the forest about 2.5 east of the Bay Area in the Sierra. The instructors will be scouting prior to the class and sending out meet-up location once we've determined the best part of the forest to take you to.
Lodging and transport are not provided, but we do provide a carpool spreadsheet to all participants that they can choose to self-organize with.

Teachers
These programs are led by expert naturalist Thea Chesney. Thea is a lifelong Sierra Nevada foothill resident. Her childhood interest in local mushrooms, wildlife, and flora has developed into an unending devotion to studying and understanding the natural world. She earned her BS in forestry from UC Berkeley while pursuing her passion for fungal taxonomy in the Berkeley mycology labs, and since then has spent her time exploring the California mountains and the organisms that call them home. She has worked as a botanist, a forester, and field mycologist. Her fieldwork and her own studies are centered in the mountains of California.

Additional teaching staff includes Ryath Beauchene, Christopher O'Maelmacasa and Carrie Staller.

"What a thoroughly enjoyable and educational experience! Our guides were delightfully grounded, with big hearts and sharp foraging minds. With their skillful support, our little group had a great time learning about fungi and voraciously foraging in the forest. Everyone found something edible to bring home."
-happy participant from our winter classes

Ticket Options

Regular Tickets
A portion of your program fee goes to Native American Rights Fund.

Adults
$150 Pay it Forward: (I'd like to support someone else to come)
$125 Standard Ticket
$100 Community Supported (these are supported by Pay it Forward tickets)

Children (yes, kids are welcome with a parent)
$75 per teen (age 13-17)
$55 per child 12 and under

To stand at the edge of the sea … is to have knowledge of things that are as eternal as any earthly life can be.
— Rachel Carson

Please register via our website: www.forkinthepath.org/classes (not on Meetup)

8 Class Dates:
Mornings at low tide
6/14, 6/15, 7/12, 7/13 led by Ricardo Romero Gianoli
6/28, 6/29, 7/26, 7/27 led by Autumn Summers

What You'll Learn
Learn how to identify, use, and sustainably harvest the bountiful seaweeds. Harvest up to 10 lbs of seaweed to take home and enjoy.
From ancient times to the present, seaweeds have been used by coastal people all over the world to nourish themselves and their gardens, as well as for health issues. The Sonoma coast is incredibly rich in seaweeds that can be used as food and medicine.

We will gather on the beach, review some common edible species, and head to where the sea meets shore to access and appreciate the abundant marine meadow growing on our coast.
The class also includes community building, and will conclude with a cooking demo of several varieties of seaweed.
To enhance your learning experience, the program will happen in two parts: a 3-hour live class on the beach, and a 30 min Zoom pre-class that will be recorded. The pre-class will provide an overview of where seaweeds live and how to identify and sustainably harvest common edible seaweeds growing on the northern California coast.
Where
A beach near Bodega Bay, CA. Exact address is provided with registration.
Facilitators
Autumn Summers is an avid wild foods forager, herbalist, gardener, and ethnobotanist. Autumn is passionate about sharing her 35 years of experience in an accessible and empowering way. She teaches botany, medicinal plant cultivation and how to safely and sustainably gather and use abundant wild edibles including seaweeds and mushrooms in Northern California. She is a lead educator at several local schools and Herb Pharm.

Ricardo Romero Gianoli who is a world citizen born in Madrid, Spain and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His parents are Mexican American and Swiss Peruvian. Ricardo has been living, foraging, and cooking Northern California since 2008. One of his passions and career focuses is kelp forest restoration. Ricardo is a certified restoration scuba diver and kelp forest monitor who has surveyed sites from the Salish Sea to Orange County but he focuses his restoration efforts on the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts. It is his greatest joy to connect people with the ocean through adventure, food, and education in the intertidal zone.

Additional support staff includes Carrie Staller.

Ticket Options
Register here: www.forkinthepath.org/classes
A portion of your program fee goes to Native American Rights Fund.

Adults

• $125 Pay it Forward (I'd like to support someone else to come)
• $100 Standard Ticket
• $75 Community Supported (these are supported by Pay it Forward tickets)

Children (recommended for age 8 and up - must be with a parent)

• $65 per child (under 18)