Like many mushroom harvesters, I got interested in foraging for fungi during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I had been preparing for a summer of field work studying foraged desert plants in a remote part of Australia when the pandemic hit, and my travel plans were abruptly frozen. It was March, right before morel mushrooms emerge in central Pennsylvania.

I wasn’t doing a lot other than going on long hikes and taking classes remotely at Penn State for my doctoral degree in ecology and anthropology . One of the classes was an agroforestry class with Eric Burkhart . We studied how agriculture and forests benefit people and the environment.

These two things eventually led to a yearslong project on mushroom harvesting in our region.

Why people forage

Foragers have been harvesting wild mushro

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