The two primary goals of these sessions are to teach you as much as possible about foraging for fungi and to send you home with some samples to try cooking and eating them yourself.
The maximum group size is five, unless the session is on private land.
Standard duration is 2.5 hours, for which the price is £100 (total, not per person) at the weekend and £80 on a weekday.
Prices quoted apply to the whole of Sussex and the immediately adjacent areas of Surrey and Kent.
Prices quoted apply during September, October and November.
Normal session times are 10:00am-12:30pm and 1:30pm-4:00pm before the clocks go back, and 9.30am-12:00pm and 1:00pm-3:30pm after the
clocks go back.
These are just guidelines. If you want a longer session, or to go somewhere outside my area or have other requirements not covered here
then please contact me and we can work something out.
If you don't want to organise your own group, and you don't want to hire me for a one-to-one session at group price, then please contact me and register your interest and availability. When (if) there are a mininum of three people who can be accommodated together then I will arrange a specific date and location. The price of these sessions is £40 per head for 2.5 hours. The maximum group size depends on the location, but will not exceed eight.
I get quite a lot of enquiries from people asking for vouchers, or how to buy somebody a session as a present. Of course I am happy to take payment in advance and I can supply a personalised voucher for one 2.5 hour session. The voucher will be valid from the start of September through to the end of November, but the recipient is advised to contact me at least six weeks before they want to go foraging in order to give me some time to sort out a suitable group for them to join. Obviously you can also just reserve a private session at group price, in which case the recipient is advised to contact me as soon as they are able to confirm a date, time and location.
Short answer: Autumn (as determined by the weather, not the calendar), preferably a few days after significant rainfall.
Long answer: Mushrooms can be found at any time of the year apart from during prolonged or extreme drought and heat. In 2011, that's what happened in October, smack bang in the middle of what should have been mushroom season. I had to cancel and turn down sessions, including one with the BBC, because there was nothing to be found. Mushroom season 2011 happened in September and November with a four-week break in the middle. Some groups of fungi never recovered, others happily concluded that since October was actually August, November must be September and that was the perfect time for them to fruit. November was also the perfect time for the normal late seasons specialists to fruit, so the result was strange combinations of fungi one does not usually see together (e.g. Penny Buns and Waxcaps).
Another answer: Thursday or Friday, rather than Sunday afternoon. Gone are the days I had the mushrooms all to myself...
Absolutely! If you only ever go looking for mushrooms in October then you're guaranteed not to find many of the best edible species, because they cannot be found in an edible state (or at all) in October. For example, Velvet Shanks can only be found in winter, morels and St George's Mushrooms can only be found in the Spring, and Chicken of the Woods can only be found in the summer. If you want to arrange a foraging session at other times of the year than the autumn, with a focus both on whatever fungi we can find and anything else that is edible, please contact me and I'll try to arrange something.
On a very good day, we will find more than twenty species of edible fungus, with far more of some of them than you could sensibly take home. An average day produces about half that number. A very bad day is when I locate less than five decent edible species, or there are very few specimens in an edible state. Very good and very bad days are unusual; most are average. On a bad day, I will give a refund of upto 50%.
That depends on what you are looking for, and what the weather has been like. I go looking for fungi anywhere there is public access to land, usually where there are trees. There's a lot of places in Sussex that fit that description. I try to vary my destinations as much as possible and try new places whenever the opportunity arises.
Yes, in relatively small quantities, and locally rather than by post. For a long time I didn't, but my experiences during 2011 changed my mind. Mushroom season came six seeks late so I ended up with no customers for foraging lessons even though they were mushrooms all over the place. I therefore decided to try selling some of the most abundant to local gastro-pubs. Prices may vary, as may availability, but here are some guidelines:
Class-A Penny Bun / Bay Bolete : £25/500g
Class-B Penny Bun / Bay Bolete : £15/500g
Mixed other boletes: £12/500g
Wood Blewits : £20/500g
Class-A Parasol : £20/500g
Class-B (large) Parasol : £15/500g
Mixed Agaricus: £15/500g
Giant/Trooping Funnel: £15/500g
Wild mix (many different species) : £12/500g
Exotic wild mix (many different species, including unusual ones): £12/500g
If you want something else specific, please ask.
Yes. I forage and can supply edible plants and I eat roadkill.
From spring 2012 I am going to be searching for more suitable locations for running spring and summer "general foraging" sessions, including woodland fungi, grassland plants and coastal foraging. There are one or two places in Sussex where all three can be found in walking distance of each other. Please contact me for details if you would like to arrange something along these lines.I was always interested in wildlife. I first took a serious interest in fungi in my late teens, hoping to find hallucinogenic species. I found a lot of other stuff before I found any Liberty Caps, and curiousity drove me to try to find out what they were. There was no internet in them days, and almost nobody who could teach a person about wild fungi, so it was a long, slow process involving books and a great deal of caution. You get the bug quite quickly, even if it takes a while to get to know stuff. In the autumn of 2009 I found myself unemployed and decided to spend the whole autumn trying to fill in as many gaps in my knowledge of edible fungi as possible. In 2010, in conjunction with Wild Mushrooms Online, I started taking members of the public out foraging for mushrooms.
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