February may be the shortest month of the year, but we certainly packed a lot in: fungi growth, planning, and events filled our calendar. It was a whirlwind, but we made it! Our Valentine’s Dinner featuring Chef Dale Hajdasz in the newly renovated Indian Ladder Farms Cidery and Brewery tasting room was a huge success! Our table was filled with excited diners, our cups were filled with tasty beverages, and our hearts were filled with the love and appreciation of friends, neighbors, and family.
The Indian Ladder Farms Campus will be reawakening on Thursday March 5th. The farm store and tasting room will once again be open for business (including our Corner Spore space). See the Indian Ladder Farms site for details.
The New York Farm Bureau hosted its annual Taste of New York legislative connection day followed by a lobby day at the Capitol. Our team served up some tasty mushroom snacks on Monday night, then Avery joined other Rensselaer County Representatives to meet with lawmakers during the day on Tuesday.
The Pacific Northwest Wild Mushroom season has kicked off. We got a small selection of Black Trumpets and Hedgehogs through Tivoli Mushrooms and sent them on to our Farm share customers with just a few left over for the Farmers Market. (Farm Share Customers always get priority for any unique fungi that we encounter – interested in signing up? Email us)
We welcomed Cricket to our market team! They will be assisting our Farmers’ Market customers in Troy with their fresh mushroom needs!
Our Mushroom Book Club is reading Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature by New York Museum Mycology Curator Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian. She’ll be joining us for our first book club session on March 26th at Indian Ladder Farms (See details below). We’ll have her book on sale at the Corner Spore until supplies run out!
The North American Mycological Association’s Committee on Medicinal Mushrooms is one only a few months away from launching our beta version of the self reporting survey on medicinal mushroom use. We’ll be publishing an article in Mycophile to describe what this project will mean for the future of medicinal mushroom research! Very exciting!
Life Scout candidate, Tayo, volunteered with us in order to satisfy some required conservation hours. They learned about mycelium compost as a soil additive. Tayo harvested mushrooms and helped make substrate blocks as part of understanding the cycle of mycelium. Incorporating mushroom compost in your garden helps balance Ph, increase nitrogen, retain moisture, and attract insect allies that help aerate the soil. Mycelium compost improves vegetative growth remarkably! Contact us if you are interested in getting some for your garden or farm this year!
New Product: Enoki Tincture
Our 3 phase tinctures always start with the beautiful full fruit fungi. We do both a cold water bath and a hot water bath to extract the full range of active polysaccharides then an alcohol bath to extract the fat soluble terpenes. Our latest tincture features Enoki (Flammulina velutipes: velvet shank, the winter mushroom, golden needle). This fungi’s purported medicinal benefits impact the reproductive systems and hormonal systems as well as providing the usual immunomodulating, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anti-tumor qualities of many other mushrooms. Studies have shown that enoki can stimulate the activity of NK cells in order to enhance immune response. Their active compounds have shown promise in easing Hypertension, reducing LDL cholesterol, Improving sexual function, increasing testosterone levels in aging males, and antiviral effects that inhibit HPV.
From MyRealWay.com: The polysaccharides and amino acids in Enoki are involved in regulating the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis, helping with: PMS, Endometriosis, Polycystic ovary syndrome, and Perimenopausal disorders. They can help improve the quality of the endometrium and reduce oxidative stress in the ovaries. In vitro studies demonstrate that Enoki extract can inhibit the growth of breast and cervical cancer cells by stimulating apoptosis and suppressing angiogenesis. The antioxidants and amino acids in Enoki mushroom help improve the condition of the skin, hair, and nails, and protect cells from premature aging.
PSILOCYBIN CORNER
Our February NYMHA meeting was not recorded as it was a short gathering that focused on a few projections for 2026 and efforts in the greater northeast region. Our March meeting will be in person at the Corner Spore as well as virtual through zoom.
Our legislative committee meets weekly to discuss ways to get our educational efforts to reach the right people. We are settling on our May educational showcase day at the Capitol.
Our team met with a PR firm to help us craft a plan for educating the greater public on the necessity for creating legal access to psilocybin. We will be making a much bigger splash in 2026!
A few Exciting articles that came out this month:
Rand published a report on country wide growing support for psilocybin access. New Hampshire and West Virginia both moved legislation towards gaining access.
Julia Etkin and Vincent Joralemon published a piece in a Harvard Law journal suggesting psilocybin-containing mushrooms be regulated as a food, instead of a drug.
The NYMHA.com research page is coming along and should be ready to share soon.
COMING SOON
New Yorkers for Mental Health Alternatives Monthly Meeting, Tuesday, March 10th 7pm – 8pm. This monthly meeting we’ll be returning to a combination of in person and on zoom. We’ll discuss our funding efforts and the planning for our next Capitol Educational Showcase and lobby day.
Join remotely via zoom here:
VENDING Mushroom Maple BBQ Heros, Maple Fest, Saturday and Sunday, March 14th and 15th 12pm – 5pm. We’ll be serving up our maple mushroom selections right in the Corner Spore. Vegan (Gluten Free without the bun). Festival is free to attend. Vendor foods are for sale.
Mushroom Experience Dinner Featuring Chef Riany Mena, Saturday, March 21st, 5:30pm – 7:30pm. Tickets are now on sale (and disappearing fast). Dinner will be served in the Clear Mountain Room at Indian Ladder Farms. See EVENTBRITE for details
Poetry Amongst the Mushrooms, Sunday, March 22nd, 3pm – 4pm. This monthly poetry series will reoccur on the 4th Sunday of every month the Tasting Room is open. Come early for food and drinks! (ILFCB is hosting a Sunday vinyl brunch for the first few months of operation that ends at 3pm) Bring a poem or two to share or just come to listen. Free.
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 pages 1- 90 in March, then the rest of the book in April. Patricia will be joining us for our discussion in March.
Mushroom Experience Dinner Featuring Chef Ric Orlando, Friday, April 17th, 6pm – 8pm. Tickets on sale starting March 18th. 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 Saturday, May 2 through Sunday May 10. This will be 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.
Foraged New York has also expanded outside the Capital Region! There are so many wild crafters all across New York independently wandering the wilds and gathering tasty ingredients to add to their meal planning, health and wellness routines, and craft and tool construction. For year 5 of our festival we want to showcase the network of knowledgeable gatherers exploring their local habitats. This year we are joined by experts in the Catskill Region and Central New York who will be hosting walks or talks and coordinating with restaurants to serve up some of New York’s non-cultivated edibles!
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 