Community Mushroom Educator Network
Cultures around the world have long valued mushrooms as a vital source of nutrition and healing for centuries. Mushrooms are grown and foreages for food, medicine, and materials, and can be powerful healing elements for people and their environments.
This project was initially supported with funding from USDA-SARE and USDA-AFRI, which supported a three year partnership between Cornell Cooperative Extension Harvest NY, the Cornell Small Farms Program, and Farm School NYC to develop the curriculum and training.
Our vision is to build a cohort of educators from urban and rural centers to increase access to mushroom knowledge in diverse communities around the US.
Community Mushroom Educators:
- Live and grow in both rural and urban locations
- Are committed to community-based education models
- Engage with community organizations, farms, and community gardens
- Speak multiple languages and can offer bi-lingual trainings, especially Spanish
- Work for farming non-profits supporting women, refugee, and BIPOC farmers
- Are enthusiastic about growing mushrooms, and excited to share with others!
The Community Mushroom Educator Year in Review 2024
The Cornell Small Farms Program was excited to assemble a group of CMEs into a leadership team (CMELT) this year. CMELT is coordinating and facilitating projects and networking across the mushroom community in New York and beyond. We have identified the education and research needs of growers and will be working to deploy experiments and workshops in spring 2025! Stay tuned!
CME Activities from 2024
Mary Jo Lane, MJ Creative Gardens/CCE Master Gardener (Rochester, NY):
mjcreativegardens@gmail.com
Leading a number of mushroom workshops including: spring foraging with tips and techniques to find choice fungal favorites such as the elusive morel, chaga, oyster, chicken of the woods, and preparing mushroom teas and tinctures for health
From Deana Tempest Thomas, Rhode Island Mycological Society:
deanatempest@gmail.com
Collaboration with fellow CME Michal Del Rio in November for the Urban Growers Leadership Program through Southside Community Land Trust (SCLT). The program was translated into a few languages, and SCLT even provided childcare, making it easier (and more accessible) to bring mushroom cultivation education to more participants.
In addition, through the Rhode Island Mycological Society, I hosted two shiitake log demonstrations this year. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to share knowledge and connect with woodland owners who are curious about fungi and sustainable forest commodities.
From Renee Keitt, Kelly Street Garden:
resimke@gmail.com
KSG was invited by the Randall’s Island Urban Farm Manager to participate in an in experiment to inoculate local tree species with oyster and shiitake mushroom spawn. We also have logs supplied by Corey Blant from NYRP inoculated with shitake. We have observed that oyster mushrooms fruit more quickly and abundantly compared to shiitake mushrooms, whether locally sourced or from upstate.
From Leigh Ollman:
lho210@nyu.edu
A group of us in the NYC area recently had a meetup and skillshare at Biotech Without Borders, hosted by our friend and mushroom grower, Louis Vassar Semanchik. We all got to work under the flow hood to make mushroom spawn, learned about liquid cultures, and shared some of our current projects (edible plastics @Katya Bloomberg !). Pictures here. Our goal is to host more meetups in the area (we have meetups scheduled for January and February), and we are discussing a potential initiative to create a series of community workshops where participants can develop spawn at the lab and then CMEs could use it to conduct inoculation workshops in the community.
How do I get involved in the Community Mushroom Educator Virtual Training?
We are not currently offering a CME training, but hope to again in the future. Please contact Connor Youngerman czy2@cornell.edu for more information.
Download our Free 'How to Grow Mushrooms" Curriculum
This curriculum is intended to support introductory workshops on mushroom cultivation. You will find resources for facilitators to help you plan workshops (agenda, activity guides) as well as material to use in class (handouts, props, etc). Several materials are available in English and Spanish, please note that not all of the English materials were translated into Spanish.
DOWNLOAD ZIP FOLDER OF DOCUMENTS
(you must download to your own computer or google drive)
You are welcome to adapt and use the materials as it is helpful to your educational goals. Please give credit to the Community Mushroom Educator Program that was originally conceived and developed through a partnership with the Cornell Small Farms Program, CCE Harvest New York, and Farm School NYC.
LAST UPDATED: 1.31.2023
In 2021, CMEs Inoculate Hundreds of Logs For NYC Urban Ag Projects
In the Summer of 2021, mushroom logs connected the upstream forests of New York state with the residents of the city engaged in urban agriculture. These logs were harvested in the Catskill mountains and sailed 90 miles down the Hudson River using a carbon-neutral sail-freight ship, the Schooner Apollonia.
From the original pick-up in Kingston to delivery in Red Hook, Brooklyn and inoculation at the Red Hook Community Farm, hundreds of individuals were involved in making this event a success, with close to 300 logs being distributed to 12 different urban ag projects in New York City.
This event is just one example of the type of collaborative, intersecting efforts the Community Mushroom Educator Network aims to facilitate. As we share knowledge, community connections, resources, and ideas, the collective benefits of mushrooms can be better realized by more people in a wide range of communities.
Current Community Mushroom Educators
Each educator below has completed the online training and delivers events in their community around mushrooms. They have provided any relevant info below if you wish to contact them:
Cecilia De La Fuente, NYC, www.cosmoplantitas.com
Marina Delgado, NYC, BioBus, https://www.biobus.org
Sneha Ganguly, NYC, @Kali_mushrooms
Amanda Heidel, NY Mushroom Shed, www.mushroomshed.us
Jie Jin, CuriousSeed, NYC www.curiouseed.com
Renee Keitt, NYC Kelly St Garden + New Roots Farm
Leigh Ollman, NY
Aysha Venjara, Falaha Center for Spiritual Agriculture, www.falahacenter.org
Erinn White, NYC Parks GreenThumb, https://greenthumb.nycgovparks.org/staff_list.html
Sam Haab, Charleston SC, Charleston Parks Conservancy, www.charlestonparksconservancy.org/conservancy
Rhys Bethke, Queens NYC, New York Restoration Project, @rhys_grows_food
Connie Walker, Erie PA, Black and Green, www. LivingBlackandGreen.com, #livingblackandgreen, intro/cultivation/ mushroom gardening/ integration of Mushrooms, English
Eve Bratman, Philadelphia and Lancaster, PA, Franklin & Marshall College and Lancaster Composting Co-Ops, www.evebratman.com, www.LancasterCompost.us, @LancasterCompost, basic intro / cultivation, English, Portuguese
Deana Tempest, North Scituate, RI, Bide-A-While Farm&Forest, https://www.rhodeislandmycologicalsociety.org, basic intro/outdoor cultivation/ mushroom ID/ fungi conservation/documentation & mycological inventory/ community outreach & guided walks
Mary Jo Lane, Rochester, NY - Monroe and Steuben County. MJ Creative Gardens, basic intro/cultivation/home and garden mushroom growing. Educate the educator. Adult and children's' mushroom classes. Herbal and mushroom identification and foraging techniques.
Shephali Patel, Washington and Oregon, mycology basics, soil health, compost, integrated mushroom agroecology, restoration mycology, participatory mushroom education
Chloe Drew, Western PA, Indiana Outdoor School, indianaoutdoorschool.weebly.com, @indianaoutdoorschool, intro/outdoor cultivation, English
Robert "RJ" Testa, New Ringgold PA, Bella Terra Farm, @bellaterrafarmrj @bellaterrafarmpa, mushroom cultivation
Carlos Miguel Espinal, Queens NY, 100th Seed, @100thseed
Adrienne Wagner, Central IN, Middle West Mushroom
Katharhy F., NY and Ecuador, K'allam'p, www.kallamp.org, Facebook @K'ALLAM'P, Instagram #runanomics, Spanish, Portuguese, Andes, and Amazon Kichwa/Quechua
Nathalie Flo, Bronx NY, Farm School NYC, Herbalism, spirituality + earthwork
Ciara Sidell, Randall's Island Park Alliance (Urban Farm), @ciarasi
Clay Hurand, Asheville, NC, Instagram: @clay.hrn, Cultivation 101, sterile technique 101, starting a mushroom farm, how to approach sales, English
Zach Strein, Brooklyn NY, Wyckoff House Museum, garden@wyckoffmuseum.org
Kyla Lang, Delaware County PA, basic intro/intro with children/cultivation
Tiffany Fomby, New Haven, CT, @lavenderandsageflow, English
Lori Koenick, Rochester NY, CCE-Cornell Vegetable Program, lbk75@cornell.edu, mycology basics/indoor and outdoor cultivation, English
Amanda Everich, Bronx NY (Wappinger Munsee Lenape Land), amandaeverich.com, @amandapoints
Melissa Shilling, Long Beach, CA, Puente Latino Association, melissa8079_, basic information, garden mushroom growing, home mushroom production and mushrooms tinctures and cooking, English
This project is a collaboration between:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program under sub award number ENE19-156-33243.
