Swarthmore College’s Fungi Fest will use walks, screenings, lectures, cooking and an author conversation to introduce the public to fungi from September 28 through October 2. The free festival is centered on Crum Woods and campus venues, with registration for some programs scheduled to open September 14, according to the Delaware County Daily Times.
The week’s featured conversation pairs scientist and author Merlin Sheldrake, whose book Entangled Life helped bring fungal networks to a broad readership, with Hannah Huber, identified by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy as a conservation mycologist working through the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program. The event is scheduled for October 1, with a livestream listed for October 2, the Daily Times reported.
The festival’s Pennsylvania setting is significant
Fungi Fest arrives in a state with an unusually large commercial mushroom sector. A Pennsylvania Department of Health report said Chester County produced 321 million of the nation’s 680 million pounds of Agaricus, or white button, mushrooms, in 2021–2022. That figure is older than the festival and covers one mushroom category, so it does not describe all current Pennsylvania production; it does, however, show why mycology in southeastern Pennsylvania extends beyond recreation and natural-history study.
The national market has also recently softened. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service reported 636 million pounds in United States mushroom sales and $922 million in sales value for 2025–2026, declines of 5% and 16%, respectively, from the prior season: USDA report. Those figures provide current market context, but they do not establish a Pennsylvania trend or show how the festival will affect demand.
From forest floor to growing substrate
The commercial side of fungi also helps explain the festival’s interest in systems that are usually hidden from consumers. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, mushrooms are grown indoors in nutrient-rich substrate; common ingredients can include corncobs, hay, straw, straw-bedded horse manure and poultry manure, and mushroom compost remains after production. The department describes the prepared substrate and compost as being designed to favor mushrooms over competing fungi and bacteria.
That industrial process is distinct from the public-facing walks planned at Swarthmore. Visitors may observe fungi in Crum Woods, but the college’s visitor guidance says the area is leave-no-trace: plant material, minerals, animals and artifacts may not be removed. The rule matters for a festival that invites close attention to mushrooms without implying that participants may collect specimens.
What the week includes
The program combines outdoor observation with cultural and practical sessions: mushroom walks led by mycologist Alden Dirks and organizer Josie Low, a screening of Fungi: Web of Life, a cooking demonstration by executive chef Tom Ramsey, an introductory mycology lecture, the Sheldrake-Huber conversation and a gallery walk tied to Low’s exhibit, The Hidden World of Fungi. The Daily Times reported the festival schedule; production notes from Higher Plain Music identify the film as narrated by Björk and featuring Sheldrake.
Low’s library work provides a separate entry point: Swarthmore Libraries documents her 2025 Moore Fellowship and fungi-related project in its account of the exhibit: Swarthmore College Libraries. Together, the exhibit and the public programs place fungi across several settings—forest, laboratory, kitchen, screen and archive—without treating those settings as interchangeable.
For attendees, the immediate takeaway is narrower and more practical than the larger cultural fascination with mushrooms: Fungi Fest offers a free introduction to a subject tied both to Swarthmore’s woods and to a major regional agricultural industry. The available production figures establish Pennsylvania’s importance, but they do not show whether the state’s output is rising or falling over time; that longer trend remains outside the evidence assembled for this event.
