Mushrooms + Culture of Greece

EARLY BIRD PRICE EXTENDED til April 15, 2023 for our May 2024 Seminar to Zagori!

Our main focus during our stay is the submerging in the ecology, the Fungi, the natural splendor and all it provides.  What you'll notice, is that we’re mushroom nerds wanting to show you their wonder and we don’t shy away from spending lots of time looking for and at mushrooms, lichens, plants and other kin we might come across.

While we take in the forests and fields, we will be building knowledge of the local ecosystems, history and food systems. Food is a huge part of our culture in Greece and our shared experience. Imagine yourself, being in the woods with mycologists and naturalists alike and then dining as if we are in an episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain, interwoven meals showcasing local treasured delicacies and community meals made with ingredients we gather together and bought from local farmers and makers.

Food is tradition, food is movement, food is engagement, food is ritual.

Our acts of learning from the landscape are in direct connection to the folk tradition and the kitchen, whether it’s in our tea pot or meal pot. This is how we often, quite literally, take in the information we are trying to experience, through our senses and specifically our taste buds. Yummy!  The traditional way of life here in Greece, like many traditional cultures still able to practice their life ways is in direct connection to the land, the seasons and preparations for future meals, medicine and growing cycles.  

Each seminar, we invite local and worldwide experts to share their knowledge and gifts with us.

SOME TOPICS + CLASSES COVERED DURING

-Introduction to Mushroom Biology

-Common Mushrooms + Plants of Greece

-Sex Life of Fungi

-Demystifying Fungal Taxonomy

-Ethical Harvesting + Gathering of Plants and Mushrooms

-Smelling Your Way Through the Forest: Making Scents of Fungi

-Ecology of Mycorrhizal Relationships

-DIY Mushroom Cultivation

-Making of Botanical Hydrosols, Syrups + Honeys

-Common Greek Herbs for Immune support

-Cooking wild mushrooms + local dishes

-Using Plants + Mushrooms for Dyeing

+ MORE!

Besides being in the field, we visit open air markets, cheese and specialty mushroom shops and hunt for the best Spanakopita. I’ll show you my favorite little tavernas that are the epitome of authentic cuisine with no frills, just how the food is meant to be prepared.

The most time we spend together will be in the forest and fields to learn and potentially gather for our meals and medicine we will make together. Collaboratively, we will prepare and learn to cook local delicacies and take things slow.

We walk a lot, not fast but we walk stairs and on paths and roads that are unkept and often rocky.  Tragically, Greece is not the best for its accessibility and we hope to accommodate as much as we can.

There's no rush, we observe and often stop on the whim because, well, there will likely be mushrooms popping on the side of a tree and we hope you would enjoy to see and touch, smell and often gather their wonder. Sometimes its the sight of a giant old tree that will require us to pay homage to its glory and stop, and observe.

This is not a high paced, fully loaded agenda, some days we are purely strolling in the mountains, with access to our collective needs and folks have free time to do as they please, others days we have guest speakers leading us on a walk in their neighborhood medicine garden or other days we are sun bathing on the shores of the Mediterranean.

We hope to share inner sweetness through the colors of blooming flowers, gorgeous sunsets and of course, the futuristic world of Fungi. 

Together, by learning more about the ecology of the forests and nearby habitats we visit, we build stronger relationships with plants and Fungi.

We meet, the Olive, their anointing oil and holy groves. Wild thyme, mountain oregano and dozens of other aromatics, creeping from limestone and volcanic soils. Citrus, pomegranates and chestnuts dripping from trees. Each representing a story and a connection passed down through the generations. We spend lots of time with new and common plants and eat fruit right off the trees!

We visit breathtaking vistas and walk paths that are, and have been in existence since time immemorial.

We will spend our days learning and sharing, soaking in the scenes, sometimes, its people watching in the city or bird watching in the highlands, we are tapping into our environment!

Join us for a small, curated offering that assembles people who want to learn about the natural world, eat great food and travel in a way that is in direct relationship to the place, people and ecology.

REGISTRATION is open!

Click below for detailed itineraries

$750 deposit is needed to hold your space, this is added towards your total registration

payment plans available-contact me directly

EARLY BIRD:

SAVE $250 ON FINAL COST OF TRIP WHEN YOU SEND A DEPOSIT

& can PAY IN FULL BEFORE April 1, 2024**/August 15, 2024**

** we will extend this price/date to anyone who shows us they donated to a migrant + refugee mutual aid support network listed on our website

Registrations must be paid in full no later than 30 days prior to the start date of a seminar

Already planning your own trip to Greece?

My team and I are available for private multi-day mushroom, ecology and folk centered trips in Greece during Spring + Fall

Olga + her network of locals are available to translate and provide care and connection to those in search and want to travel of their ancestral villages or regions. We are here to get you a more authentic experience rooted in traditional practices, care for the land + people.

NEED MORE INFO?

email me directly: smugtownmushrooms@gmail.com or send me a message through the button bellow

HOSTS

Olga Tzogas runs and operates Smugtown Mushrooms, a farm and mushroom production facility that cultivates mushrooms, offers growing supplies and provides classes to her community for over ten years and has been studying mushrooms and plants for almost two decades. She is a daughter of Greek immigrant parents and grandparents who started a Greek diner in Rochester, NY in the late 1970s that still operates today. Growing up, she returned back to Greece with her family and spent lots of time in her parents village in the northern borderlands. As she became more enamored with Mycology and botanical studies, her times in Greece became anew, and relearning what gifts the land and experience in the Balkan peninsula shared. Olga remembered that this was part of her, a living tradition, to learn from and to share. Its a deep honor and pleasure to be able to return to Greece to guide, host and share what is loved the most; frolicking in the forest and fields looking at mushrooms, plants and birds.

You will catch Olga kneeled down on the ground scoping the mushroom scene out. Her enamored heart for fungi and plants definitely has a lot to do with the kitchen, and you’ll notice she’s here to feed people and make them feel comfy and held. She loves the act of growing and gathering food with people and cooking afterwards. Her long family tradition of caring and cooking for people extends here in Greece and with many of her class offerings is a huge part of who she is. Let her show you how she learned to cook some mushrooms!

Olga Tzogas has been hosting classes, events, art shows, music events and lasting and more importantly mushroom and biocentric events for over a decade. She is a co-creator and organizer for the New Moon Mycology Summit, a justice focused mycology and biocentric gathering. In the past, was an organizer for Mycosymbiotics Mushroom and Arts Festival, now called MycoFest and in 2016 was a core organizer for the Radical Mycology Convergence in New York. She started bringing mushroom minded people to Greece since 2016.

Nina O’Malley is a medicine maker constantly building relationships with plants and fungi. Nina’s background is in soil, environmental and wetland science. Post college she pursued self-study in mycology and studied herbalism at Sacred Plant Traditions. Nina handcrafts local medicinal products for an apothecary in Afton, VA and her business Mush Luv. Connecting to the land where she lives in the Blue Ridge (Monacan territory) and connecting to her Irish, Lebanese and Swiss ancestral roots in the kitchen are central to her life. She teaches workshops to the community in central VA and wherever the fungi and plants call her. Nina is passionate about helping connect people to the land through direct experience.

Charlie Aller aka Charliceps is a mycologist and lover of nature born and raised in Central Virginia, USA. A life-changing encounter with fungi in 2012 changed the course of Charlie's life and sent him deep into the mycelium underground. He currently works on low-tek mushroom farming and mycological research at Farfields Farm, a diversified research and educational farm in Afton, Virginia. Charlie also grows and forages mushrooms for Mush Luv, a small business founded with partner Nina O'Malley in 2017 that seeks to facilitate closer relationships with mushrooms in our local community and at large.