We are dedicated foragers wanting to share our knowledge and learn from each other. Putting faces to names, and names to faces, helps you see what you’re getting into when you join us for a day celebrating wild food.
John Wright is fundamentally an organic farmer at his farm, Red Beet Row. This is where he and his partner Stephanie grow new and interesting crops for our region while saving seed and selling interesting hard-to-get nursery plants. Some of their long-term projects include: mushroom log cultivation, ecological forest management, prairie restoration, plant breeding, beekeeping, animal husbandry and natural building. Because his work is interdisciplinary he has taught a variety of classes including: homesteading, wild foods, plant identification, soil fertility, market gardening and sustainable design. His life’s work is devoted to community resiliency in our region.
Don King, also known as The Mushroom Hunter, can often be found hiking the forests of Ohio and neighboring states in search of wild mushrooms and other delicious and healthy edibles, which he considers to be the pinnacle of sustainable, local foods. Don loves to share his knowledge of wild foods, and how to prepare them, through private and group identification workshops and wild edible hunts, as well as video tutorials and other appearances. He has been featured on NPR’s Good Eats with Vivian Goodman, and has made over a dozen appearances on Fox 8’s New Day Cleveland. Don has been foraging for two decades, and has been teaching mushroom identification for 15 years. He runs foraging classes through his website, as well as through organizations such as Cleveland Metroparks, Holden Arboretum, and The Wilderness Center. For the Ohio Wild Food Fest, Don will be leading a workshop called “Edible and Medicinal Mushroom Identification.”
A lifelong camper and nature lover, Susan Majercak graduated from Hiram College with a BA in Environmental Studies. She spent her internship performing a forest survey at the Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic site in Hyde Park, NY along the bank of the beautiful Hudson river. Her interest in foraging began with joining a mushroom hunt, and then during covid when everything was shut down she headed outside! She downloaded the iNaturalist app on her phone and proceeded to identify many of the plants and “weeds” within a half mile of her apartment. From field research on invasive earthworms to kitchen experiments with tincture making and adventures in foraging, Susan is creating a life that allows her to explore and live within the cycles of nature. She will be presenting a workshop on the invaluable practice of keeping a foraging journal.
Raymond Morris
Ray is a mushroom and native plant enthusiast. His passion for wild edibles stems from a desire to be connected not only to what we consume, but to the earth as well. This has lead him to learn the edible and medicinal mushrooms of our Ohio forests. Ray operates a native tree and shrub nursery called West Branch Forest Treasures. There, he grows fruit and nut trees from seed from local and high quality sources. He also operates a small farm where he is creating a food forest of native plants.
JB Douglas
JB Douglas is a forager and food maker based in Cleveland, OH. His recipes and food photography featuring foraged ingredients have been published across a wide variety of digital and print publications, including VegNews, Edible Magazines, and the New York Times. He directed culinary content production at Foraged Market after working with food access programs and farm retail operations in New England for several years. He’s passionate about leading demonstrations and creating educational materials to teach people about the value of wild foods in their diet. Currently, JB is earning his Master’s in Sustainable Food Systems from the Culinary Institute of America, with a focus on how foraged ingredients could play a bigger role in the future of food. In his free time, he creates a wide variety of crafts from foraged materials, including baskets, utensils, paper, pigments, brushes, and brooms.