May was such a wild month! With the 5th year of Foraged New York kicking off in restaurants and other venues around the Capital Region and beyond, lots of fungi finding, forest explorations, and new mushroom friends being spread around our farm, we were busy, but most of our free time was spent outdoors! The New Yorkers for Mental Health Alternatives advocacy went really well and generated some great press. Read on to see how May went, and what more is winding along the mycelium.
Foraged New York Year 5 was such a blast! We tried as many of the wild offerings as we could!
We put together 3 Reels to wrap up all the wild happenings! 8 Capital Region Restaurant Tendrils, 2 further away Restaurant sprouts, and 3 independent workshops all wove together to create opportunities for New Yorkers around the state to engage with wild crafted ingredients.
One of the last Foraged New York adjacent events we attended in May was a plant and fungi identification walk at Soulfire Farms (it happened a few weeks after the wrap up reels). Led by Jonah Vitale-Wolff and Patty Ononiwu Kaishian this walk explored the Soulfire property and environs!
We ended the month with a delicious meal of almost entirely foraged ingredients. Golden Oyster Dumpling Lasagna and pineapple weed cocktails.
We’ll be typing up the recipe for the dumpling lasagna to share in June!
With all the furious activity of the month, Mr Blue Sky still inched forward in its completion. The electrics are done and all the inner wall coverings are nearly finished. Adding this grow space will allow us to easily accept new wholesale customers and provide abundant supply for our market customers.
Avery taught a crash course in fungi lore at the Berne Public Library. There is so much to learn about mushrooms, and with only 60 minutes of programming picking what to dive into was difficult. This standing room only crowd ended up going for 90 minutes with another 30 minutes of individual discussions that followed. We will be offering additional educational experiences throughout the year.
The buckets of straw from our Cornell Cooperative Extension workshop in April have fruited twice! We have them stacked in a tower in our grow room!
We rely on Field & Forest spawn for all our outdoor grown varieties! They have always provided clean, healthy spawn shortly after ordering! We highly recommend them!
We found so many wild mushrooms! Morels, golden oysters, wine caps, japanese umbrella inkies, common psathyrella, several agrocybe strains, eyelash cups, hairy oysters, orange mycena, reishi, and dryad saddles are among the myriad of fungi fruiting in May! Not all of them are edible, but they are all fascinating!
Our second year of Farm Share deliveries has begun! Farm Share customers get first crack at Wild Mushrooms we find like Morels and Golden Oysters in the spring, and Boletes and Chicken in the fall. They also get priority of our outdoor grown varieties like winecaps and blewits! Still a few open spots available. If you’re interested in getting on the inside list for unique fungi email Avery Stempel
Wayward Lane Brewing is hosting a farmers market 2 Sundays every month. We plan on attending at least once a month. Live music, award winning beers, and delicious dumplings are the norm for this market. Wayward Lane is certainly a gem of Schoharie County.
Nearly every Wednesday we enjoy a few frosty cold beers at the Helderberg Mountain Brewing Company Tasting Room in East Berne. Stop by from 5 to 6:30 and talk fungi, drink one of HMBCs offerings, and go home with fresh mushrooms!
Tom Eschen from Channel 6 news Sat down with Avery in the Corner Spore for a discussion on how the farm is doing a year after our move from Troy and what we think about the progress towards legal psilocybin means for our business.
Morels were a regular offering during May! It was a prolific spring!
This spring we’ve added many new mushrooms to our “mushrooms of Indian Ladder Farms” presentation. We hope to put together a program in the fall that will showcase all the fungi we’ve found on the farm!
PSILOCYBIN CORNER
There was no May General member meeting, as the second Tuesday happened to be our New York State Capitol Education Day. Our team spent the entire day meeting with law makers and their staff to inform them about the newly amended bill language and the steps New York needs to take in order to create safe access to psilocybin-containing mushrooms.
Not only did we meet with law makers in their offices and at the Capitol, we also engaged with them through zoom!
Mushroom farmers across New York have expressed their support for legal psilocybin-containing mushrooms. Once it is legal for consumption in New York, our farmers will be able to grow this additional specialty crop and provide it to licensed professionals.
City and State Article about our efforts HERE
DoubleBlind Article HERE
A news blurb specifically about our May 12th educational day HERE
Our friend at Microdosing Collective are hosting a policy webinar on Wednesday, June 3rd. Register to attend live, or get the recording after. It is featuring NYMHA’s own Allison Hoots (also Hoots Law Practice and Sacred Plant Alliance ).
Click HERE to register.
Our friend and advocate Joe McKay published a powerful opinion piece in the Times Union.
Join us on the second Tuesday of every month as we navigate the off session period and continue to build momentum for our advocacy efforts.
COMING SOON
New Yorkers for Mental Health Alternatives Monthly Meeting, Tuesday, April 14th 7pm – 8pm. This monthly meeting we’ll be returning to a combination of in person and on zoom. We’ll flesh out our next Capitol Educational Showcase and lobby day. We’ll talk about our plea for volunteers.
Join remotely via zoom here:
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There is still room in both barn school classes for budding young mycologists! The Magical World of Mushrooms for grades 1 through 4 and a Deeper Dive into Mycelium for grades 4 through 8. For details and to register your learner click HERE . June 29- July 3, and July 6 – July 10th respectively.
A Mushroom Experience Dinner at the Adirondack Experience Museum featuring Chef Matt Olley, Friday, August 21st, ADKx Museum. For tickets: HERE
A Mushroom Festival at the Clifton Park-Halfmoon Library, Saturday, September 12. 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 