Fungi for the People brings three mushroom courses to Virginia mountains
Three mushroom courses are headed to Virginia's Blue Ridge, from a New River bike foray to an ID camp with Charlie Aller, as Appalachia builds a tighter fungi learning network.
Fungi for the People said it was bringing three mushroom courses to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia in August and September, and the lineup reads like a map of where Appalachian fungi education is headed next. The mix includes a foraging bike tour on the New River, an identification camp with Charlie Aller, and a cultivation design course built with local partners in Floyd.
The New River outing pairs Fungi for the People with BrambleBerry BikeWorks, turning the trail corridor into a classroom that moves. The ID camp brings in MushLuv, the Charlottesville-based mushroom company run by Nina O’Malley and Charlie Aller, while the cultivation design course is being organized with Floyd Yoga Jam and Gnomestead Hollow in Floyd, Virginia. Together, the three offerings point to a broader curriculum than a single weekend foray: field identification, growing systems, and place-based learning tied to the Blue Ridge landscape.
That breadth matches the way Fungi for the People has built its teaching model over time. Its 4-day hands-on mushroom-growing course has run since 2012 and has drawn homesteaders, DIY gardeners, artists, teachers, home business start-ups, ecologists, and mushroom fans from around the globe. Workshop listings also show cultivation design courses on the calendar in 2025 and 2026, including a March 25-28 session and another set for October 21-24, evidence that this Appalachia expansion grew out of an established program rather than a one-off experiment.
The instructor network behind the new courses is already rooted in the region. MushLuv says O’Malley and Aller have more than a decade of experience growing, finding, and loving mushrooms, and Aller has led mushroom ID walks centered on morels, turkey tail, deer mushrooms, inky caps, and other species. That kind of field instruction matters in a place where the learning community is becoming more organized, not just more active. Blue Ridge Mycological Society, founded in 2017, is a 501(c)(3) club affiliated with the North American Mycological Association, which says it has more than 90 affiliated societies across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
The setting is part of the story too. New River Trail State Park runs roughly 57 miles through Southwest Virginia, and Virginia State Parks has promoted bikepacking there, making it a natural stage for a mushroom-foraging ride. Gnomestead Hollow says it produces gourmet and medicinal mushrooms in the New River Valley and Roanoke Valley, tying the class schedule to an existing regional mushroom economy. Foragers also have to know the rules: Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources allows mushroom gathering on some public lands, but Wildlife Management Areas require a permit or qualifying license and collecting is for personal use only, while state-park foraging is generally prohibited without permission or a permit. That is the other side of the growth story in the Blue Ridge, where mushroom education is becoming more structured, more local, and a lot harder to dismiss as a scattered hobby scene.
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