Autumn Mushrooming Foray: Fungal Friends & Herbal Allies

What is more iconic of autumn than brightly-colored mushrooms poking out of the forest floor? Bring out the foraging basket, because it's that time of year again, when these crucial, mysterious members of our ecosystem pop up to fruit & spread their spores – and provide tasty meals to the critters around them, including us humans!

Porcini, chanterelle, parasol, chicken of the woods, puffball, oyster… Wild mushrooms are famously prized for their delicious, complex flavors. With a little searching, even us city-dwellers can find kilos of delicious fungi almost right outside our front doors, thanks to the amazing forests around Berlin. Yet, as is well-known, when it comes to mushrooms it takes knowledge and experience to distinguish the delectable from the deadly!

Join Simka (they/them) for an autumn adventure into the forest around Hohen Neuendorf, where we will get acquainted with the most common & delicious edible mushrooms growing in this area – no experience necessary.

Together we'll explore the forest floor and learn the basics of how to find, identify, collect, and prepare the wild edible mushrooms that are currently in season. Here you will learn which mushrooms to stay away from – and how to get confident enough to bring your own harvest home.

Fungi play crucial, unseen roles in our ecosystem. Yet only when they fruit do we see them above the forest floor in the form of mushrooms, which come in an enormous diversity of shapes, colors, sizes, textures, smells, and flavors. With 6000 species of fungi in Europe alone, there is so much to discover!

Because fungi are such fickle fruits and their appearance is determined by many factors, including the weather, there's no guarantee the conditions will be right for an abundant harvest. But there's always something around to fill the foraging basket – so in case the mushrooms end up more sparse than we hoped for, we'll take a closer look at the delicious edible plants & herbs that line the path instead.

Our mushroom hike will take us through beautiful autumn forest scenery, including past a 500-year-old oak tree and alongside a picturesque lake, where we will pause for lunch. There will be plenty of time to relax, explore, and take in the serene surroundings.

When: Saturday November 11th, 10.30 - 15:00
Where: Frohnau Forest, near S-Bahn Hohen Neuendorf (~ 6.5km walking in total)
Cost: Sliding scale 40€ / 31€ / 22€ or pay what you can

Attendance is limited to 15 people, so registration is required!

Don't forget to read the confirmation email carefully for all information on the meeting point and what to bring.

A note on pricing & philosophy:

I'm offering my foraging tours this season on a sliding scale / pay-what-you-can basis, because it's a deep value of mine that this learning – which radically connects us with ourselves, the land, and one another – should be accessible for everyone.

However, I do rely on this income!

That means: if you have the means, pay the full fee, or more.

If you don't have the means, please feel fully invited to pay whatever you can.

And if you want to come, but genuinely cannot afford any extra expense, reach out to me directly for a 100% discount, no questions asked. I have absolutely been there, I see you, and I want you here.

I'm trying to do things differently, because it matters to me. Please join me in the complexity of building a better, more equal world!