The January cold wind and snow couldn’t keep our fungi from fruiting! Now that we are entering year two of our operation at Indian Ladder Farms, we are starting to smooth out some of the bumps, understand the new challenges, and relax into our new operation. In 2026 we will be offering more workshops and educational opportunities, and slowly bring back some of our “amongst the mushrooms” activities! We have a lot planned, and January was a great example of things to come!
With Indian Ladder Farms closed for the season, our dinner program popped up at the Helderberg Mountain Brewing Company’s tasting room in East Berne. We bring fresh mushrooms and a selection of our other products to the tasting room (nearly) every Wednesday, and they opened their doors to a full mushroom experience dinner cooked up by Chef Kate Ray. Every course was paired with a frosty cold beer brewed by the HMBC team and owner Mike Wenzel introduced each beverage and talked about the tasting notes and how it complimented the food while Kate talked about her meal creation processes. It was such a fantastic evening all around!
Planning for Foraged New York 2026 is under way! We are looking for a few more local foragers to help harvest found produce! Send an EMAIL if you are interested in helping.
Our 2026 Farm Share program will kick off the first week of May. The support we get from farm share customers really helps us through the cold winter months while the Corner Spore is closed. We have 3 different tiers of delivery available. 52 weeks ($500) 26 weeks delivered every other week ($250). Or 26 weeks delivered every week with renewal halfway through the year (also $250). A selection of fresh mushrooms is delivered to Sound House Records on King Street in Troy or available for pickup at the Farmers Market. To sign up send us an EMAIL . When we get wild foraged mushrooms, the farm share members get priority!
If you want to grab some of our fresh mushrooms, stop by the Troy Waterfront Farmers’ Market. One of our team members is there every Saturday!
While foraging season is mostly paused for the winter, we turn to our collection of mushroom games to bring us some fungi fun! We played 3 different games during January!
Indian Ladder Farm’s Barn school registration is now open
There will be 2 fungi specific classes this year. A beginner basic class for 1st – 4th graders and a more advanced cultivation class for 4th – 8th graders. Registration has already begun! Check out their other classes too!
We found some beautiful fresh Turkey Tail in the snow when we visited the Helderberg Workshop Sugar Shack to talk about collaborations for Maplefest.
The North American Mycological Association Medicinal Mushroom committee is finally in the home stretch in launching our medicinal mushroom self reporting database. If anyone is interested in Beta testing the database, let me know by sending me an EMAIL . In the meantime, check out this great video put together by Dr. Michael Beug.
This mushroom will kill you before you know what’s happening – Michael Beug
We’ve been meeting with the small farms team from Cornell Cooperative Extension to talk about mushroom cultivation research. We will be participating in 3 studies this year. Experimenting with using black walnut shells as a substrate in conjunction with Black Squirrel Farms, surveying outdoor log-grown shiitake metabolites across New York State in early spring, and using apple pomace as a substrate for growing mushrooms.
Here’s a recipe for you
We based this on the New York Times Creamy Miso Pasta Recipe.
Ingredients:
16 ounces pasta (we used sfoglini cascatelli)
6 tablespoons of unsalted butter
3 tablespoons of white miso paste
4 ounces of freshly grated parmigiano reggiano
~14 ounces of fresh golden enoki (chestnuts, oysters, or beech would work well too)
3 chopped fresh scallions
Fresh Kale (or broccoli)
2 minced cloves of garlic (or more to taste)
1 TBS Soy sauce (or tamari for GF)
Salt, pepper, garlic powder
KALE: Steam a batch of fresh Kale when pasta is just about done cooking.
MUSHROOMS: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Trim substrate off of mushroom clusters if necessary. Pull enoki apart into small chunks or single mushrooms. Toss into a bowl with 1 minced clove of garlic, the soy sauce (more if necessary, should lightly coat mushrooms), and garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste. Lay out on a well oiled baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, check to ensure no charring. Flip mushrooms, bake for another 5 – 10 minutes. Checking frequently to prevent charring.
PASTA: Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Add pasta, cook as directed. Reserve 1.5 cups of pasta water.
SAUCE: Once pasta has cooked. Add half of the butter to the pot, heat until melted. Add remaining minced garlic, cook for 30 seconds to a minute. Add remaining butter, reserved pasta water, and miso paste. Whisk for 1 – 2 minutes until miso is fully dissolved and liquid is uniform. Add in cheese. Stir vigorously until creamy and smooth. Add pasta, continue to stir vigorously for a few minutes until sauce thickens.
SERVE: Put pasta in a bowl with the side of kale. Garnish with chopped scallions and roasted enoki.
PSILOCYBIN CORNER
Our January NYMHA meeting was not recorded as it was a quick review of 2025 sucesses and a look forward to 2026. We will have one more shorter nuts and bolts virtual only meeting before we restart our guest speaker program and in person meetings at the Corner Spore.
Lots of exciting things happened nationally with psilocybin access. The New Jersey Bil passed and was signed into law by the governor authorizing 3 hospitals in NJ to begin a pilot program for legal access each with a 2 million dollar budget. Read the full bill HERE.
West Virginia also moved a psilocybin access bill out of their health committee and onto their general assembly floor. House BIll 4640.
The Northeast Alliance for Psychedelic Access met and Vermont hosted with an update on advocacy in the green mountain state.
State Representative Brian Cina who sponsored one of their substance access laws attended and spoke about what VT needs resource wise in order to move the bill forward.
We are working on adding a section to the NYMHA.com site for resource sharing. Our team has amassed a database of studies related to the efficacy of psilocybin-containing mushrooms to treat different conditions (thank you SuzyMae!) and we want to share this info with the wider advocacy world. Our goal is to have it active by th eend of February.
COMING SOON
Farm Bureau Taste of New York Event for Lawmakers and staff, Monday, February 9th, 5pm- 7pm. Convention Center, Albany Plaza. This event is for lawmakers and their staff to educate them on New York’s agricultural products.
New Yorkers for Mental Health Alternatives Monthly Meeting, Tuesday, February 10th 7pm – 8pm. This monthly meeting will be fully on zoom. We’ll discuss some of the things we have planned for 2026 and talk about successes and challenges in the states around us.
Join remotely via zoom here:
Mushroom Experience Dinner Featuring Chef Dale Hajdasz, Saturday, February 14th, 5:30pm – 7:30pm. Visit our EVENTBRITE page for details. Dinner will be served in the newly renovated Tasting Room at Indian Ladder Farms. Tickets are going fast for this event!
Mushroom Experience Dinner Featuring Chef Rainy Mena, Saturday, March 21st, 5:30pm – 7:30pm. Tickets available 2/18. Dinner will be served in the Clear Mountain Room at Indian Ladder Farms. See EVENTBRITE for details
RETURN of the Mushroom Book Club Thursday, March 26th & April 16th, 6:30 – 7:30pm. We’ll be meeting at the Indian Ladder Farms Tasting Room to discuss ‘Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature’ by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian. We’ll discuss 1- 90 in March, and the rest of the book in April.
Mushroom Experience Dinner Featuring Chef Ric Orlando, Friday, April 17th, 6pm – 8pm. Tickets available soon. Dinner will be served in the Clear Mountain Room at Indian Ladder Farms. See EVENTBRITE for details.
Ric Orlando is an award-winning American chef, restaurateur, author, and culinary storyteller known for his bold, globally inspired approach to food. With a career spanning more than three decades, Orlando has built a national reputation for blending Mediterranean, Latin, and Middle Eastern influences with seasonal American cooking, always grounded in culture, generosity, and flavor. With multiple BEST CHEF and BEST RESTAURANT awards in NY’s Hudson Valley and Capital Region, Ric is known as the OG of Upstate Chefs. Orlando is best known for pioneering restaurants New World Home Cooking Co. (Woodstock-Saugerties, NY) and New World Bistro Bar (Albany, NY) and for his dynamic presence on television, including victories on Beat Bobby Flay and Chopped. He is also a regular guest on WAMC-Northeast Public Radio and appears on many regional podcasts. His work beyond restaurants includes a webstore (https://tastemakermarket.com), consulting, cooking classes, pop-ups, cultural travel experiences, and the authoring of We Want Clean Food, a companion to the 2003 PBS Series Ric Orlando’s TV Kitchen. Equally central to his career is a deep commitment to community. Orlando is currently president of the Good Neighbor Food Pantry in Woodstock, NY, where he supports food access initiatives and community-driven efforts to address food insecurity in the Hudson Valley. This work reflects a core belief that food is not only nourishment, but connection, dignity, and care.
Today, Ric Orlando continues to shape contemporary American dining through media, mentorship, and advocacy and developing new hospitality concepts like Accord Social (coming summer ‘26), —using food as a cultural way to bring people together at the table and beyond.
Contact
Matouks@gmail.com
+1 845.417.4503
Visit https://ricorlando.com for recipes, commentary, info on Sicily, Puglia and Heart of Italy tours, Ric’s hand made product line of award winning Hot and BBQ sauces, global seasonings, 5 ingredient tomato sauces and exclusive Sicilian olive oil and pasta.
Ric Orlando is on Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, YouTube, and Substack at chefricorlando
FORAGED NEW YORK 2026 Sunday, May 3 through Saturday May 9. Year 5 of bringing wild crafted ingredients to the Capital Region and Beyond. We’ll have a host of restaurant partners, a variety of foray walks, and a workshop or two! Stay tuned for details.
A Mushroom Experience Dinner: FORAGED EDITION featuring Chef Matt Olley, Saturday, May 9th, Indian Ladder Farms Apple Barn. Keep an eye out for details.
A Mushroom Experience Dinner at the Adirondack Experience Museum featuring Chef Matt Olley, Friday, August 21st, ADKx Museum. Details coming soon.
A Mushroom Festival at the Clifton Park-Halfmoon Library, September 11 – 12, dates and times still to be finalized. This celebration of all things fungi will feature book talks, film screenings, workshops, and foray walks! Mark your calendars now! Stay tuned for details
Collar City Mushrooms 