Christmas Gift Ideas for the Forager in Your Life

Gifts for Mushroom Lovers & Foragers

As the holidays near and we are all necessarily cozy at home, it’s time to think about Christmas gifts for your favorite foragers! I am always on the lookout for fun mushroom-themed stuff. The list is long this year – there’s no better time to support your favorite local businesses and artisans. 

Below you will find some of our favorite things. Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

Top Favorites

Here are a few things we can’t live without! Do we use our own cookbook? Yes! ALL the time, the recipes from our foraging friends are inspiring.

This Swedish berry picker is a game changer for collecting huckleberries, choke cherries and the like. Totally awesome and inexpensive.

Of course we are biased, but if you’ve been looking for some new inspiration on how to cook or preserve wild mushrooms, this book is for you.

We take our hori hori knife on the road wherever we go – just in case (it’s THE BEST)! Be careful though, the knife is sharp.

The America the Beautiful Annual National Parks Pass covers parking in many, many locations that foragers frequent! We buy a pass every year.

Foraging Knives

I’ve met quite a few serious foragers over the years and one thing I can tell you is that they all love a FEW good knives. Custom made knives can be really special as some makers take orders. At the same time a simple foraging knife with brush is great for a newbie.

Foraging Bags & Baskets

It’s so much easier to protect your finds when you have a great bag or basket! 

These hand-crafted Slater baskets are one of a kind and truly beautiful. A very special gift for someone you love. Guessing these may require an order well in advance as they go fast and take awhile to make. 

We are biased, but love our foraging bag with mesh and four quadrants which allows you to separate by species OR by quality. It’s hand sewn out of recycled sleeping pads here in Colorado. And we have some fun new colors in stock!

We always pack one of these mesh laundry bags as an extra. It’s great for overflow when the first pack just won’t hold all your finds!

Foraging Fashion

We all love fun and beautiful mushroom themed fashion. Take a look!

Chris has quite a few mushroom-themed tees in his shop. You will also find some wicked cool stickers. Hand drawn and hand printed.

I think Trent owns every mushroom shirt from this artist. Fun and quirky nature themes. Also hand drawn and hand printed. 

We have some cute t-shirts in our store for ladies and for men! This is one of my personal favorites. Simple and stylish. These shirts are print-on-demand which means they take about 10 days from time of order to get to you. Order early for the holidays. 

Trent has been rockin’ this chanterelle tee from Robin MacLean since Telluride 3 years ago. He is tough on his shirts and this one is still going strong! Simple, fun designs and quality material. She also has tea towels, placemats, aprons, masks & totes – check it out!

Get ready for Telluride! These guys have some serious tie-dye talent. They do have mushroom themed shirts, just message them via Facebook and see if you can get a custom order made.  

Our friend Mayumi makes the most beautiful nature inspired silk scarves. They are hand dyed using natural dyes and foraged plants from the San Francisco Bay area. 

Swedish pants for hammer-wielding warriors are also great for foraging! Our friend Jeem swears by them. Fancy duds with seriously cool pockets and knee pads.

Want to rock Telluride next year? Just amadou it! Check out these suave amadou mushroom hats from Transylvania. Our friends surprised us with a pair of them last year – they are so soft and super fun. 

Foraging Gear & Tools

Cool stuff for cool cats that love being in the woods.

Discover a whole new macroscopic world of fungi through the eyes of a lighted loupe. Wondering if that really is a turkey tail with true pores, this thing will let you know with 40X magnification. 

Gaia GPS will keep you from getting lost in the woods, and you can use your phone! No need to worry about cell signal, you can download your maps before you go and the gps will keep track of you. Share your treks with your foraging partner & tag photos along the way. This link will give you a 20% discount – enjoy!

Gift the burn morel hunter in your life 2021 burn intel this year! We spend hours curating burn maps for morel hunters in 11 Western states, sorting through fire data and removing many poor choices. We also choose 10-20 top fires in most states and provide details and hunting tips for each of these burns. This includes our Burn Morels e-book. 

Foraging is a wet and muddy business. When you don’t feel like wearing a full set of rain pants, a good pair of gaiters will do the job. Many here to choose from!

This is that cool gift you didn’t know you were looking for! These scissors look super handy and come with a nice leather sheath.

Hands down my favorite mucking around boots. Not great for long forays, but good for a few hours in a wet forest. Salmon Sisters for the ladies are cute and stylish.

In the Kitchen

We spend lots of time in the kitchen prepping and preserving. Here are a few things that make life easier!

This gadget makes vacuum sealing a breeze while on the road. No need to drag along the big sealer, just pack this along with some special bags and you’re good to go. It will also seal lids on canning jars, crazy cool!

What forager doesn’t need a package of food safe desiccants to keep their dried goods dry? Hello stocking stuffer!

Oxygen absorbers keep vacuum sealed foods safe longer. We use them all the time.

These Swedish berry trays are awesome for washing your mushrooms (yes we do!), I’m sure they work well for any foraged item. 

The Magical Butter Machine is truly a wonder. Yes, it IS a product meant for creating marijuana infusions, however, it also works amazingly well for a million other things. You can control time and temperature on this thing. It’s great for making strong chaga tea and/or extracting beneficials from any foraged plant or dried mushroom. 

Mushroom Fruiting Kits

Curious about cultivation? One of the best ways to get the whole family excited about your potential new hobby is to buy a ready-made fruiting kit. All you need is a temperate space and a spray bottle. In a few weeks all of you will be delighted. There are lots of kits out there these days, here are a few from our friends:

Our friends at Mushroom Mountain have been making fruiting kits for years, let their experience fruit for you!

These “spray and grow” kits from North Spore are great for beginners. Super easy and fun for the whole family!

Mushroom Tinctures & Powders

You have to be hiding under a rock if you haven’t seen mushrooms in the news these days. They are having a moment – from leather and meat replacements to depression and PTSD treatments to home building blocks! If you want to gift healthy immune systems this year, check out these tinctures and powders.

Mycomatrix organic, adaptogenic, triple filtered mushroom extracts are made right at Mushroom Mountain.

North Spore’s Immunity Blend has all the good stuff – Chaga, Reishi, Shiitake, and Hen of the Woods

Perfect for smoothies and the like, OM mushrooms powders delivery a high quality product.

We use Oregon Mushrooms red reishi powder to make things like Graham Steinruck’s Reishi Pot de Creme. Super high quality products. 

Industry leader, Paul Stamets, has a whole series of Host Defense products for pretty much anything that ails you.

Culinary Mushroom Products

Looking to give the gift of health and deliciousness? The first two purveyors have beautiful dried mushroom products and Shared Cultures has koji products that are truly unique. 

Wine Forest Wild Foods has been offering wild mushrooms and foods from the heart of nature since 1981! They have a nice selection of dried mushrooms and other fun culinary delights.

Far West Fungi is the name in CA wild mushrooms, they have a very large selection of dried wild mushrooms and many other fun products.

Eleana and Kevin at Shared Cultures are Koji innovators. If you haven’t tried ‘kojified’ products, now is the time. These creations would make a unique gift that any mushroom foodie will really appreciate.

Books

Foragers rely on books, they delight and educate. These are just a few of our favorites. Buy from the author direct if available or ask your local bookstore to order for you! At the same time, Amazon makes or breaks us – leave your favorite authors a review (you don’t have to have purchased there to do so). 

This is one of our favorite books! 100 of the top culinary mushrooms – how to identify, where and when to find, and how to cook them.

The documentary that is sweeping the nation! Join Louie, Paul & others to learn about a fungal model for planetary survival. Official companion book to the film.

Mycophilia examines the role of fungi as exotic delicacy, curative, poison, and hallucinogen – learn more about one of the least understood and most curious organisms in nature!

In The Way Through the Woods, Long discovers a most unexpected form of healing – hunting for mushrooms. Perfect for anyone who appreciates the magic of the natural world. 

A new favorite this year! The Fungal Pharmacy is the perfect guide for those wishing to explore the benefits of medicinal mushrooms. 

A companion to the Fungal Pharmacy, this book offers proof if needed, and provides references to human clinical trials performed with medicinal mushrooms. 

The Wild Table is a beautiful book full of extraordinary delights. Connie invites you to explore the romantic, mysterious, and delicious world of foraged food. 

Timberpress offers four mushroom identification books for different regions around the country. NE, PNW, SE and Rockies. These ID books are a solid goto for any forager. We own all four!

Journals & Subscriptions

Surprise your favorite nerdy forager with a whole year of education!

The Journal of Wild Mushrooming is a quarterly magazine for people curious about wild mushrooms – whether hunting or cooking, roles in human culture or their unique biology.

Fungi Magazine is always at the industry forefront. The mycophile in your life will appreciate receiving this beautiful magazine 5x each year. 

Give the gift of camaraderie, the North American Mycological Association (NAMA) offers one of the best forays of the year and prints the Mycophile newsletter.  

Gifty Fun Things + Splurge

A few more things I just couldn’t leave out! If you don’t find something here, go to Etsy and search for ‘foraging’ or ‘mushrooms’. Prepare to lose at least an hour, lots of great makers out there these days. 

The mushroom tarot cards that took the industry by storm this year! Even if you have no idea what tarot is, these cards are beautiful. Every single card is a hand-drawn piece of art.  

I could not leave our 4-legged beasts out of the list! Our dogs love this portable water boy so much that they insist on using it at home too. Great for road trips to keep your buds hydrated. 

These hand crafted mushroom rings are so cute I had to include two different kinds, see below 😉

See! What did I tell you, such a cute mushroom ring. Three words that you might not expect to follow one another 🙂

I am in love with this art. There is something so incredibly special about an old growth forest. This is a ring print from a real 372 year old Oregon Sitka Spruce. The prints are made by hand and pressed from the stump. If this tree could talk…  

These quirky patches from Meriwether are hilarious. If you are open to a little shroomy humor, this one might be for you (or 5 of your myconaut friends) 😉 

Last but certainly not least is the Harvest Right Freeze Dryer. This is a big ticket item, it’s expensive. We splurged on a machine a few years ago specifically for experimentation with culinary wild mushrooms and have not looked back. This thing is humming in our garage at least 3 days a week. Lately we have been experimenting with instant chaga tea to great success! 

Do you have favorite items that you just love? Leave us a comment and let us know, we’ll try to share a link!

Showing 2 comments
  • Sarah Schott
    Reply

    Please BEWARE of scissor sheath from Hammerthreads off etsy. Canadian product NOT as represented! Inaccurate colors represented in pictures, lack of ethical resolution to misrepresentation, return policy at your expense. It’s too bad as leatherwork is good.

    Scissors can be purchased at any botanical website as they are Japanese Bonsai Trimmers, and inexpensive. Sheathe’s are at many leatherworks websites.

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