MycoWizards (Erik Lomen)

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And just like that! WE ARE BACK! We have a lot of plans for the future of the Mycowizards Podcast and we are stoked to unroll it all slow and low like Texas style smoked meat! There are whispers in the Buck65 wind spreading rumors of @heymikevance and @shroomsodoom getting into a van with a carefully curated suitcase straight out of Fear And Loathing to scramble senses from farm to farm like bats out of doom, dead set of filming and recording the entire mycological insanity. Think 1990’s firework wars on the highway straight out of Thrasher magazine #phelperforeverforeverphelper … but with a proper mycological focus…after all Harvard still throws better parties than Amherst! (someones not gonna like that one!)  … But until then, here is the long-awaited Episode 22 of the Mycowizards Podcast featuring Andrew and Adam of @smallhold … I made a wild rip down to the Big Apple to catch up with the Smallhold crew to see what they were working on and in the process we got to recording a nice couple hour conversation on the when and the where of their mycological journey. So sit back and enjoy or get to knocking while you listen! Stay insane myco wizards of the world and stay tuned in while you drop the F$#* out!

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The road to finding the magical, mystical hero of a mycological OG that is Marc R Keith (Roger Rabbit) has been a wild one. We all have a bit of interloper syndrome in this life, especially when we are searching for someone we admire, someone who has been integral in getting us going, someone who possessed that nugget of info we needed to continue on, someone who inspired more than just you. That last fact is what has carried this MycoWizards Podcast project forward. I come from a line of dedicated educators and I think stories, real life stories, unadulterated and only filtered through open conversations can brighten the mind like learning a new subject for the very first time. Enter a recording device. Podcasts are everywhere and the ones that seem to hold the most magick are the ones that meander like the mind in time and space. Interviews are so much looser now. The style of Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell has been expanded upon in interesting rivers that run wider and longer than the audience at hand. All in all, there are lessons over and over in the quick comments and displays of tales that seem too wild to be made up. This episode is my notes, my thoughts and really my first time just addressing the audience of the MycoWizards World as myself, Erik Lomen, unfiltered, unedited, in an attempt to translate the lead up to my first conversation with the master, RR. When you are young you often get asked the question: what three people would you like to have dinner with, dead or alive, and I’ve never been able to answer that, there are too many amazing people in this world and they're all invited to the feast! - Erik

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Where did it all begin I asked Marc R Keith...picking up a hitch hiker to score some dope exactly 50 years ago, Marc told me...and the tale goes on from there...50 years later Marc is bound to the west coast while he forges ahead through a 7 year battle to get back his property from backwoods thieves who forged every document imaginable to kick the widowed king of the shroomery off his own land. This is the land his fans know well, where Let's Grow Mushrooms was filmed, where the double barrel boiler/pasteurization system and the shipping container buried in the back hill still sit like earthen question marks in the geography. Marc is making corned beef on rye and we go right into it like we have known one another for a lifetime. Marc is as sharp as a buck knife under a blood moon. He has a grasp on the past, present and future like a fearless sailor set to sea bellowing Hold Fast like the knuckle bone plasma scratches of old. Harleys and tales of wild times bring out his smile, seemingly brighter and more dangerous than ever. The spirit of your hero RR is alive and well and he is ready to tell his story.

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Josh Googins of the one and only Fallen Oak Mycology is a man on a mission. A Mushroom cultivator driven by more than just supplying food to a system. Josh aims to bring a biotech element to his company that is currently based out of the down and dirty diddy that is Austin City! Josh has style and there is an element to his steez that is indescribably necessary for boardroom meetings with oil rigging executives who might just be convinced that there is a better way to be less harmful to the world at large in their profit driven spheres. The current mush-boom is seeing a lot of folks fighting to maintain a grasp on their false sense of exclusivity through popular identifiers set to defend a self built wall constructed like a permanent line between them and the industrial juggernauts of the world…while those folks are necessary, archetypes like Josh might be able to bridge a gap and implement what only the old school punks in an anarcho-daze could only dream of. Josh has lived many-o-lives and can see the waiver in the self sharpening blade of time to maintain a viewpoint from both sides of a coin. His creativity and stoke will ultimately make a large difference in this world, just you wait and see!

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I think I'd like to be the person that warns his friends about the addictive nature of commercial mushroom cultivation, but instead I seem to just increase the insanity and the stoke with all the power of the doom! This is the case for one Sean Mulkern, Cap N Stems very first employee. After traveling a great many miles from coast to coast he, and his lovely partner Cat, decided to take up the fine art of sleepless nights, spore lung and endless farmers market rabbit holes all for a taste of the greatly odd satisfaction that comes with perfecting the art of the fungal grow. Poor friends of mine, they never knew they had it coming. Ok, ok, it's not that dramatic...it turns out you can be successful in this industry and actually enjoy your first year in action, as Sean and Cat have done with their fungi-child @wildfruitings ... So go give them a follow and listen to their cries for help in this episode of the Mycowizards Podcast!!!!!

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Oh my, oh my, the time has come to do this MycoWizards thing for REAL! We are loading up on cameras and gear to make two tours of the US this summer and record with some of the best cultivators in the industry…Roger Rabbit Episode Two you say?! You fucking know it! We have so much on the horizon that we are boiling over with stoke and we are ready to pierce through the blacktop, drifting state to state to bring myco-stories from their points of origin directly to you on your farm. So stay tuned and get stoked folks and enjoy this little update from Maine. 

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Mickey from Little Acre Gourmet Mushrooms out of little ol Australia got gifted the ultimate dream of any emerging mushroom cultivator, a paid for trip around the globe visiting every farm he could possibly hit along the way. Over the last few months Mickey and his partner Amy have made their way from Singapore to Japan and China, through Europe and the entire continental USA, hitting up as many mushroom farms as humanly possible...dude even got his hands on some of that tasty bacon from ecovative's new company to devour with @notfixedbrakeit ... I was on the way back from the El Diablo Run in Mexico when Mickey and Amy rolled through town and missed them by a couple of days of delayed travel so I count my lucky stars I got to jump on a zoom call to record this 3 hr cast with the Churchill Fellowship winner from down under! Y'all are gonna dig this episode, it's always fascinating to get a slight worldly perspective on the whole Mycowizards scene but Mickey got a massive download in 70 straight days!

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Straight from the mushroom capital of the world, we bring you a sit down with Lou Caputo, the main man behind Kennett Square Specialties. From cleaning fruit rooms, to running around with a generator during power outages, he's done it all. He is leaving a generational imprint on this beautiful mess we know as the mushroom industry. Follow along on this journey with us as we dive deep into what makes these mazes of mycelium grow down in the infamous PA mushroom world!

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While we have a million and one new interviews with all the greatest cultivators from around the globe coming your way, we figured why not release some detailed mycological nerdiness to please the masses in between interview releases! We get so many questions in our inboxes and some stick out, eventually this will lead to a regular Q&A series as part of the MycoWizards Podcast, but for now we thought we would go whole ham on Shiitake Cultivation. This subject is near and dear to my own personal experiences growing the mighty Lentinula Edodes over the last decade. So buckle up and dig in to the pickiest little punks on the myco-sphere as we go through the history, strains and techniques necessary to understand to pull off perpetually successful crops of Shiitake Mushrooms!

Don't forget to check out our video series at MycoWizards.com and be sure to check out our Deep Dive on the Shiitake Mushroom while you are over there!

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This is our first go interviewing someone a bit outside of the cultivation sphere, but our guest today has a lot of experience conversating with cultivators and other "myco-preneur's" from around the globe. Today we bring to you Dennis Walker of the Mycopreneur Podcast! He has seemingly endless personas to sell the idea that everything is being sold to you in the mushroom and psychedelic industry today. Through all of the satirical punching up he has done to point out the obvious and make us full belly laugh, he is consistently putting out one of the most important podcasts today. He has tied networks of mycopreneur's together around the globe, cover as many festivals and events as one human possibly can while remaining humble to the facts that he is on this ride as much as any of us, holding on, enjoying it and making a difference with the folks he is choosing to support and uplift with his viewership.  Dennis Walker is a dude to keep an eye on. Enjoy and keep the MycoWizards network growing!

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Sam Shoemaker, what a dude after my own heart. When you are born with an art brain and have an art background, you simply cannot help but look at life and all of your undertakings through that creative brain lens...and thank goodness! The world would be a lot more dull without the art nerd factor, there would be no MycoWizards and there would be no MycoMyco if that were the case. Sam has built a farm, developed an art career and carved an educational path out of his medium of choice, mycelium and fruiting bodies. If you don't know his work, you should! Often times us cultivators of the world forget how beautiful these mycological formations are when we are simply chasing down recipes and yields for income. The best part of being in this industry is you can take a moment, pause and revel in alien amazement at the things were are growing! Sam keeps that stoked central to his work with mycelium and myco-materials. He is a one of a kind human in this exploding industry!  

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Maddies mushrooms is a small, family run, gourmet mushroom farm in the northwest corner of Washington state. David and family decided to begin mushroom farming after the birth of their daughter Maddie in 2020. Their family has always been very passionate about eating healthy local food. Seeing a void for fresh mushrooms in the area they were excited to try and help bring a variety of gourmet mushrooms to the community. The farm was met with equal excitement and so far it has been hard to keep up with the need for fresh gourmet mushrooms in this area. This has not only inspired visions of growth for the farm but the creation of a festival to celebrate mycology. The interest and eagerness to learn from so many was the fuel for the concept of creating a platform for people to gather and learn about the many incredible aspects of mycology.
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The Olympic Peninsula Fungi Festival cultivates discovery, connection, and community. The festival increases access to experiential learning about an array of mycology topics and brings people together in one of the most renowned ecosystems for fungi on Earth.
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The festival will feature lectures, hands-on workshops, guided forays, mushroom cuisine, and more from internationally acclaimed experts, both local and from across the U.S. Live music, a vendors’ market, and camping will make for a full three-days of family fun between Port Angeles and Sequim.
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No matter where you’re at on your journey with mushrooms, we guarantee this festival will inspire something new!

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There were only a few folks who initially went head over heals cultivating cordyceps in the US back in the early 2000's and Alex Dorr of Mushroom Revival was one of them! Now with a full line of mushroom health related products, a brand new book and a booming podcast, Alex has transcended beyond his humble beginnings and entered into a world where feeding the media beast to keep the growing masses of mushroom devotees entertained, happy and healthy is the name of the game! Go check out the selection of Alex's goods at Mushroom Revival and give his Mushroom Revival Podcast a thorough comb through because there is a lot to dig into, from the first episode to the newest! The rabbit hole of this industry just keeps getting deeper and deeper and there is no better guide than folks like Alex leading the climb down into the myco-abyss! 

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It happened in a flash, we were out one master of the media and I knew I was not going to edit my own voice and videos for all the MycoWizard's out there! (no one can stand their own voice, can they!?) I remember we were on our way back from the El Diablo Run in Mexico, so I had a good 3500 miles to think through the next iteration of MycoWizards and with every mile closer to Maine, the stoke just kept growing! So I called my nephew Daniel who was living down in the swamp lands and proposed an idea and within a couple of weeks, at most, we were loaded up into the van of doom and headed down the east coast to record video episodes of this podcast exclusively for mycowizards.com ... here us recount the tale of our adventures from Maine to Kennett Square, down through the Carolinas, into Florida and over to Louisiaaaaaaannnnnaaaa in this recap! 

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It was 2015 and in a flash I was kicked off Facebook, for reasons I suspect originated with my being on the terrorist-watch-list after starting numerous Food Not Bombs Chapters across New England throughout my anarchistic youth. The constant ding of the notification bells for the newly formed and overactive CMGN was no more. A couple years later for some unknown reason I was let back in through the cornflower blue digital FB doors and like an old ghost entering a familiar hallway I noticed what seemed to be an abundance of new farmers humming along in the infamous CMGN lands. This moment was the first moment I realized mushrooms were about to have a bit of an explosive renaissance. Some of these farmers seemed like strangers yet others were familiar throughout their early Instagram use. Fox Farm and Forage was a familiar one. While James might say it's all Amy, Amy and James Fox were bitten by the mushroom bug and have not looked back since. I first recorded a MycoWizards episode with Amy in early 2021 when everything was far beyond uncertain. The winter was cold and the expansion plans were still there for all of us...just on a bit of an extended hold. While that first podcast recording was never released I knew I had to get Amy's whole story on record eventually: thus this episode and the formation of the East Coast MycoWizards Run of 2023!  

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Joseph Iovino is a man sculpted from pure badassery! From fire fighting, to actual fighting to mushroom cultivation. The man was a myth before Daniel and myself rolled on down to his neck of the woods to record this interview. I had heard a lot about Joe over the years and it proved one thing, everyone was full of shit in their attempts to describe such a rad human. If you are in the Tampa area of the Sunshine State, hit him up and support Cactus Hat Mushrooms! 

We are trying something new with this release, anyone currently signed up for the MycoWizards Deep Dives at www.mycowizards.com will be receiving a bag of Cactus Hat's Lion's Mane Coffee in just a couple of weeks! So, if you haven't updated your mailing address in the MycoWizards Membership Portal, DO SO NOW!!! You won't want to miss out on this badass gift of neuro-regenerative caffeinated goodness from Joe and his team, to you, the Mighty MycoWizards of the World!!!

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It's easy to start something, It's another thing to carry it forward through time and space as it grows and morphs and develops its own definition of limbs allowing for an observed sense of autonomy. Sometimes we refer to this as making a Monster, building an Entity, generating Something larger than oneself.  Regardless of scale, mushroom farms today fit into one of two categories, there are the ones who are innovating as they grow and there are those that take a form fit and follow a play book. The difference between the two is that one is waiting to sink while the other is swimming, simultaneously creating a current. MyCo Planet is innovating and driving swiftly towards this conceptual autonomy. Robin and Jake are stoked, taking chances, holding necessity and hard work in one hand and stoke and the almighty nerd factor in the other. The team they amass will surely make a splash in the currents of modern day mycology, so keep a keen eye on these folks as they make themselves innovative leaders in the myco-sphere!  

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The first time I met Cyrus Lester of Mushroom Maggie's, I had no concept of the entire story behind such a genuine and bright human. All I knew after a couple of days showing Cyrus around Maine and NH was that it would be imperative to get him and Maggie onto MycoWizards. The story of Maggie and Cyrus is a wild one from the get go; initially just childhood acquaintances through a stack of turbulent formative years, their relationship, brainchild and drive today, stems from stacks of prison love letters and a common goal in building something better for their battered community. I remember the first time I hitched west across the bottom of the US, the difference in cityscapes and population compared to NYC or Boston was astounding. The closer you get to where Texas borders Mexico the more wild and outlaw it gets and the people follow suit. These people are the beautiful humans after my own little anarchistic heart. Maggie and Cyrus are as true and as kind as they come. The whole East Coast MycoWizards Run began with the goal of getting down to film and record with Cyrus and Maggie and the rest I’ll leave for the interview ahead of you!

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On two wheeled deathtraps through fall sun showers and ever changing scenery, RR and myself sped north from the base of the Olympic Peninsula under a solar eclipse, all the way up to Port Angeles for the 2023 OP Fungi Fest.  All red eyed and road stoked our aim was to give the old school shroomery fans exactly what they wanted, 2 hours of tall tales and details into the cultivation world of the one and only Marc R Keith. 

For all of those that showed up, you are all blessed beasts of the mycological machine and we thank theee! There is still so much to say about the humans who begin the decent into topics like the wandering seekers they are, hell bent on discovery, the AHA! moments and the decoding process of such secrets that can only be sought after in the complexities of nature. These hermetic zen masters of the lunatic-world range from Harry Smith to RR in my mind, along with all the magickal mycowizard mystics in between!

We are so stoked to bring you this second installment of our time with RR and can't wait to share the 3rd episode during the depths of this winter, so keep an eye out and an ear sharp and we will keep supplying you with what the one and only Sam Shoemaker calls, our love letter to the cultivators!

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Eric Pearson of Son and Skye is a myco-farmers dead set on the details of cultivation. His interests exist within the systems, controllers and concepts for keeping rooms regulated and running in the intense heat and humidity of the Florida summers. While his farm is small and seemingly off grid in its appearance, the dials are finely tuned and honed in on simplicity which leaves breathing room for actually enjoying the fine art of cultivation. A lot of us who have grow our mushroom businesses past the point of no return with partners, loans, mortgages, grants and stretches of expansion that would drive any mycologist mad, have a lot to learn from someone like Eric. He has paved a different path, where he is able to run a business, spend time with family and experience life beyond the perpetual grind for growth and that is something more challenging that you would think!

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There were many things racing through my head when I first met Roger Rabbit, the OG king of Shroomery.org! But an almost decade long battle to get his stolen land back in Malo, WA was not one of them. I’ve spent the better part of two years in conversations with Marc, going back and forth from the east coast to the west coast, riding motorcycles all over hell’s half acre to saturate myself in and understand the entire situation. After all this could happen to any of us and in fact it has happened to several of us cultivators in recent years. Reading through all of the documentation Marc diligently kept on the illegal destruction and seizure of his property, it still blows my mind that this sort of thing continues to happen in the United States, without retribution or even a day in court. Put simply, we humans can be a doomed people solely looking for an opportunity to exploit without much thought other than, how might I gain from this. I chose to believe the majority of the mushroom community is not like this and therefore we can help one another out when called upon. I know I do, every day, helping farms solve cultivation issues early in the morning, on my drive to and from the farm and late into each night. We are a different breed of people driven by different forces, we want to help, we are the earth workers and the lab nerds who shine bright with curiosity, determination and kindness. The town of Malo in Ferry County Washington is where Marc planned to retire. It is where his  wife Vivian passed away and it is the place most of us know well from his “Let’s Grow Mushrooms” video series. The shipping container fruiting room buried in the side of the mountain, the double barrel steamer and that infamous tiny flowhood. The people of Malo WA are not our people, they are demonic chess players who thrive on motivations of advancement without concern for the people it negatively affects.

Being denied a day to make his case at the Supreme Court level, Marc R Keith, alone, is out of options. But with a little help from our community, Marc might be able to get his property back and prove a wrong doing so intentional and illegal that even at a glance one would wonder how this was all allowed to happen. So I, Erik Lomen and the entire MycoWizards and Cap N Stem crew, along with Marc R Keith, ask you, MycoWizards of the world, to send out 4 letters referencing Marc R Keith vs. Ferry Country, WA to:

FBI Field Office, Seattle

1110 3rd Ave

Seattle, WA 98101

WA State Attorney General Bob Ferguson

1125 Washington Street SE, PO Box 40100

Olympia, WA 98504

VA Inspector General Hotline (53H)

810 Vermont Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20420

Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner

P.O. Box 40255

Olympia, WA 98504-0257

You can also find and attach Marc’s “Complaint And Request For Federal Investigation” PDF at www.mycowizards.com/RR under the show notes to send in with your short and polite letters requesting a look into his case. The main Mushroom Growing group on Facebook has three hundred and forty seven t

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Try to get Kyle Garrone to talk about anything but growing mushrooms and the emerging world of contemporary cultivators and it will ultimately snap back to mushrooms like an elastic band to itself. The draw and intrigue is too intense for the majority of us to stray far from. We stay up late into the dark hours contemplating pneumatic movements for saving time and speeding up a means to grow more and it is ultimately only exhaustion that blankets the intense obsession to allow for a semblance of slumber. It’s a gift and a curse to be generational in this industry but Kyle has brought Far West Fungi out of the labor intensive dark ages of the early 80’s and 90’s where the industry consisted of brute force and an underpaid labor force to get gourmets into the market. Kyle’s global perspective feeds into the important narrative that if we want a mushroom industry to persist and stabilize in the states we need to start building the institutions, the labs, the farms and the networks to empower the youth of now and tomorrow to take the fungal forces into our own domestic hands. Globalization of food crops is a tricky dichotomy to be on the fence about. Build the schools, build the farms, decentralize the fresh food sources and stabilize the myco-world instead of attempting to dominate it and if successful we will have made momentous strides in the direction of my least favorite word due its misuse and abuse, sustainability.      

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Some of our favorite mushroom cultivators are of old punk origins. You know the ones, strapped and packed with an array of patches, CDs, books and leftover dinner all in that high resting backpack rippin’ uphill on a fixed gear or in deteriorating ox-blood doc martens hopping rails and riding free atop the boxcars dead set on the western sunsets. They stand for experience and true freedom in this land of insanity. Their Ginsberg-ian will to be weird projects outward in the most endearing way as does their smile and their outspoken nature when it’s most needed. The archetype of the zen lunatic punk turned cultivator always makes it clear as hell where they stand and Amanda of KM Mushrooms is as true blue punk as they get. I can’t remember when Mike and I decided to stop in on her farm along our west coast MycoWizards tour but we are damn stoked we did because we found a true homie to fold into the anarchist-myco-hive. If you don’t know KM, you clearly are in the wrong crowd, so listen in and enjoy this week’s episode recorded on sight with the one and only Amanda Janney! Don’t forget to catch @km_mushrooms and @shroomsodoom in the flesh this summer giving a talk on scaling a mushroom farm at the @farwestfungi Santa Cruz Mushroom Festival!

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Shortly before deciding to take the leap into commercial gourmet mushroom cultivation, I stumbled across a video of a young Hamilton Morris reporting on Magic Truffles in Amsterdam for Vice News.  In this video Hamilton visits a farm that had to quickly pivot away from fruit body production and into sclerotia forming p. tampanensis cultivation sometime around 2008 due to the prohibition of magic mushrooms by the Dutch government. Years before the ban on the actual fruitbodies, my childhood friend Ken and I entered the Netherlands as naive American stoners and exited through a one way portal into another dimension. Life, for me, was never the same.

Hamilton has written, reported on and recorded an endless amount of fascinating conversations with chemists, anthropologists, mycologists, historians, ethnobotanist and psychonauts from around the world. He has brought out some of the most fringe characters of the psychedelic age and has given hope through his films, series, podcasts and publications to an endless group of us living similar lifestyles. Of the many things he has done and continues to do, Hamilton never ceases to amaze his supporters, a group of devout humans tuning in, forever appreciative of his drive and efforts to report on the stuff we simply cannot get enough of.

This episode, as mentioned in the intro, is a sort of attempt to bridge a gap in my own work. The hope is to combine and interweave the cast of cultivators on either side of a severely stratified industry. As @mushroommundo pointed out to me, its the mainstream vs. the marginalized that is keeping the boxers in their corners. We have a lot to learn from one another and if you don't believe that, I encourage you to look a little harder at the folks just over the river. Collaborative efforts are in our future MycoWizards of the world, so keep an open mind and keep a sane state of stoke to feed the fire and stay driven!

- @shroomodoom

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Mike and I ripped up the coast of California towards the never-ending boarder-lands between the sandy dunes of the hot as hell desert and the perfectly temperate pacific blue until we came to the land of Mighty Cap Mushrooms in Paso Robles.  Chris and Branden emerged from the first expansion of Mighty Cap, a super clean and well organized grow, to give us a tour around. There are two personalities that can compliment one another in an extremely beneficial way in this industry and Chris and Branden are a perfect example of this. Chris can sell, talk and engage with an audience stoked beyond belief about mushrooms. Branden can grow, organize, focus and outperform many people with his long developed mycology skills. These two cultivators with their specialized skill sets, when brought together, stand a chance of building big things. Mighty Cap Mushrooms is now closing in on their next big expansion which is sure to rock Paso Robles and the surrounding towns with some of the freshest mushroom products in the state. So keep an eye on these folks as they grow and take over California with their stoke, drive and honed mycological minds!

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Welcome back the mighty Neil Brent of Columbia Mushrooms! There are a million and one hilarious things that can be said about Neil, but this batshit hero to the cultivation crowd knows how to grow gourmet mushrooms like the best of them. What I appreciate most about Neil is his split dedication to the stoke and the stone cold assessments of any given situation, object or attempt to avoid a phone call, delicately entwined with all the dark humor one might hope to muster in a lifetime. Japan, as a country, knows who Neil is and so should you! He lives according to the madness we all have simply learned wrestle with as we grow our fungal kingdoms. Neil has mastered his craft and doesn't seek the same fame or fortune as most. His satisfactions are in the mechanical bits that keep his operation lean and focused. Mike Vance and I caught him after a wine bender but he none the less entertained our road weary souls for an afternoon of beer, food and of course, Mushrooms. So sit back and enjoy this episode among your Friday Hepa Hummmmmm!   

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Julian Mattucci, also know as @dedikaryotizationdaddy is a dedicated researcher and a talented mycologist. He has been in the throws of some of the more nerdy but important breeding work in the wild word of mushrooms. I came across his Dedikaryotization Protocol via a shroomery post offered up by the one and only @alan_rockefeller a few months back. Julian's work is focused on the development of a haploid culture bank for the purpose of getting folks into breeding his collection of isolates. From Dedikaryotization to DNA Sequencing and 3D Printing, Julian is a myco-engineer through and through ... If you are interested in genetics and breeding this episode is dedicated to you ... A large majority of cultivators start out with that star-struck-stoke on the fungal networks that begin emerging from their stainless steel work surfaces in front of their trusty home-built laminar flowhoods. After months and sometimes years of refining carefully crafted techniques aimed on expanding phenotypes, obsession takes over the majority of their free time. If the hobby develops into a mushroom based business, the origin energy that is hunting, discovering and breeding genetics never fully fades. Until now, not many folks could image being able to run a culture bank or even purchase proven strains from a culture bank with worthwhile genetics. Prior to the early 2000's, all we had was Mycelia, Aloha and a handful of small distributors of alleged commercial cultures. What Julian is building is a major step towards growing and stabilizing the emerging cultural hyperfocus on mushrooms with scalable cultivation-centric systems and precursors. So keep your eyes peeled for his work and get restoked to reenter the flowhood fuzzzzzzzz!     

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Round about two years ago the entire Cap N’ Stem crew hosted a massive bonfire at our newly acquired property in Lewiston. Many joined in the insanity, many bailed, motorcycles broke down, did burnouts or wrecked into dark Maine gullies, but the fire raged on and the partying continued through to the next morning! One of the most mysterious characters to show, arrived in a feathered bowler hat with a grin soaked in mycological-stoke…you know the kind of smile, paired with those slightly sunken in eyes that say, “I’ve been up for 5 days straight knocking in front of the flow-hood and I still managed to make it to the bonfire!” Gabe DeCicco of Traveling Cap is one driven dude. He has been bitten hard by the cultivation bug and is currently dead set on building out his operation. Give Gabe a follow and support this radical dudes undertaking as he floods the streets of Beantown and beyond with his gourmet delights! 

You can find more info out on Traveling Cap at https://www.travelingcapmushrooms.com/

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The age old tale, or so it seems in these fast moving times seems to be Mycelium vs. Fruitbodies ... but what if you simple added both into your products, built out and followed through with scientific studies for publication and actually collected data after proceeding to test, test and test again. Steve and Sam of OM Mushrooms have been doing just that and growing fast into the myco-obsessed market over the last 5 years. But their stories didn't begin just half a decade ago. Steve Farrar and Sam Andrasko (aka: Lipa of The Shroomery) sat down with us at their last location prior to their big expansion in Carlsbad California to talk everything from their early days cultivating to the modern myco-debacles. In a world now briming with big players, nutraceuticals have exploded onto the market but OM's inception was perfectly timed and primed for the very start of the pandemic. 2020 caused many things to happen all at once, but one of the unexpected occurrences was the sudden awareness, concern and some might even say obsession with healthy living through super foods and supplements.  Mushrooms are getting their long overdue limelight in the west and OM is seeing a direct beneficial impact from such a monumental shift in the western ways of eating for a better life! 

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Shane Schoolman and Michael Heim are going wild in the game of mushroom-extracts. Dual Extraction What???? Soxhlet Who???? They had me at Cordy-Crystals and Gnar-Tar, never-mind their in depth exploration of ultrasonically extracted myco-molecules suspended in cavitation bubbles. A few weeks after recording this weeks MycoWizards episode I hobbled into Cap N Stem's HQ groggy, redeyed and destined for the endless drip of black coffee, but much to my surprise a nice array of alcohol and glycerin based MyCoLove extracts were sitting on a rolling rack in front of me, along with a second box for the "Shulgin-ites", blue dropper bottles decked with a dash of masking tape and labeled "CM Gnar-Tar", "HE Gnar-Tar", GL Gnar-Tar, ETC...In a flash, our conversation came back to me and with almost automatic action I slugged down a syringe full of the goopy brown CM Gnar-Tar...within 3 minutes we had lift off...what kind of insanity have these wild MycoWizards of Colorado origin created? If you're unsure of the mystical medicinal mushroom extracts out there, look no further than these super saturated dropper bottles packed with flavorful rocket-fuel, as they hold the power to break the skeptics spell. All in all this episode is about much more than just some extracts, it's about actually farming the mushrooms used in the extracts. MyCoLove Farm is a small collective of wildly intelligent folks dedicated to their craft with a history that's worth reading about and paying attention to!

You can find more info out on MyCoLove by visiting
https://www.mycolove.farm/

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It took over a decade but I finally got the chance to sit down with Eliah Thanhauser of North Spore and discuss our long and interwoven histories in the Maine mushroom industry. North Spore has excelled in so many things through their explosive growth in the myco-sphere. Co-evolving alongside of them has been an amazing ride full of insight and challenges and tales for days! While Eliah and I just scratch the surface on a variety of topics, we had an audience to keep in mind as we sat among the most amazing fungal-fanatics at this years Mycology Outside, an annual event North Spore hosts at the Ecology School is southern Maine. Eliah has a heart of gold and the genuine curiosity and kindness that lights up a room and keeps this industry growing in the right direction. Persisting and expanding in the retail environment of the still burgeoning "Mush-Boom" is fraught will insane challenges but the dedication to continually educate the consumer remains at the forefront of the three founder's minds eye. Jon, Matt and Eliah are a rare breed of co-owners who have been sticking it out through thick and thin to see how far they can expand into the fungal feeding frenzy. While Jon and Matt were in the audience and pop in with comments from time to time, keep an ear out for their individual MycoWizard's episodes in the months to come! (That's right fella's, I'm coming for ya, mic's in hand!)

You can find more info out on North Spore by visiting
www.northspore.com

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We have spent an incredible amount of time thus far tearing into our infamously high yielding commercial dikaryons to develop a gourmet monokaryon culture bank here at Cap N Stem. The goal at the end of the day is to understand these monokaryons on a deeper level and to develop new breeding programs. Last week we launched our expansive episode on the process of mechanical dedi-kary-ot-ization over at mycowizards.com and this week we figured we would release an entire conversation on the topic between Sir Gregor Jones and Erik Lomen to bridge the gap between the audiophiles and the die hard MycoWizards Deep-Dive subscribers and community members. A big thanks must go out to @protoplastpurveyor for simplifying the mechanical dedi process. Keep getting weird with fungi ya'll! See ya next week for "Cloning A Wild" only available at MycoWizards.com 

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Lentinus Tigrinus AKA the "Tiger Sawgill" mushroom is something that has fascinated a handful of mycologists for a long stretch of time. From a fungal evolutionary standpoint, it is a mushroom with a long stretch of phylogenetic-flux. The current fruitbodies develop as a rather straight forward "agaricoid" form while simultaneously exhibiting a "secotioid" morphology within the same phenotypes. If you look back far enough into Lentinus' ever evolving phylogeny you'll find Lentinus Tigrinus is a polypore relative thanks to the postdoc work of Dr. Alexander Bradshaw...This past summer I was asked to talk at Northspore's "Mycology Outside" event and the first person I was introduced to was Thomas Roehl of Cark University. We immediately began chatting about the "Buller Phenomenon" and Thomas filled me in briefly on what his presentation would be about: Lentinus Tigrinus. While we go into a bunch of components of his talk in this episode you can get the pretty complete download on it Here ... Thomas, working along side Alxander Bradshawn and David Hibbett, who was one of the first mycologists at Clark to really dig into the Tiger Sawgill, have uncovered some amazing details about this fascinating mushroom. Thomas' past mycological projects and devotion to fruiting Lentinus Tigrinus in controlled environments, capturing amazing timelapses of both the mushrooms morphologies, brings this genus and species full circle for the cultivators out there!

    

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It’s easy to get pulled into the groundswell of hyper fixated myco-nerds at a mushroom festival. At some point after this conversation you are about to hear, Will Lockmiller of Sno Valley Mushrooms, Roger Rabbit and Robert Rogers, collected myself and Danielle Stevenson to go join Will and his partner for dinner at an obscure and hidden gem of an Olympic Peninsula Mexican Restaurant. Will and myself went down all of the mycological avenues and industry gossip like wolves in a rabbit den until we looked up to see everyone else a little more quiet than us. RR speaks up, “Jesus, are these two still talking about mushrooms?!” This reality rings true for a lot of us in the cultivation scene when we get together with one another. RRs statement and Robert Rogers’ smile broke up the one track hive mind and we began talking about secret research projects, art and life. I will always be grateful for this meeting of the minds in a secret little mini mall oasis of a Mexican Restaurant as far north as one can get in the OP of Washington State. There is so much to say about Will’s achievements with Sno Valley but we will let the full conversation tell the tale! 

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Clint Jurek of Flying Saucer Farms has cultivated, conquered, fulfilled the desire and is on his way out of the mycological world! It’s always a challenge to accurately describe just how wild and intense the rampant growth rate of decentralized mushroom cultivators in the US has been. From 2008 until today the number of “commercial cultivators” within the US has grown by 5000% or more. Flying Saucer Farms was right there in the middle of this explosion, spurred on by much more than an Amadou Hat and a Ted Talk. This growth has happened before in the US and world at large, but so much has changed since the last myco-boom. Its pathway into the future is now based 100% on the lightning speed sharing of information and concepts. Clint is a philosophical polymath dedicated to teasing through external ideas, theologies and communication systems as well as sorting through the internal concepts and conflicts, drives and motivations of his own being. For Clint the mushroom cultivators lab, incubation space and grow room is a whole or complex of temples/longhouses/pagoda’s/sanctuaries for the mycologist to work out a myriad of ideas. We amateur mycologists are a sort of archetype and the systems for cultivation are of our own design. We live and work in these systems like mycelium in a substrate. At a point of growth, expansion means introducing a plethora of external forces that can commonly be representative of the open doored church on the corner. Contamination will always make its way through a pinhole. For some, this is the end of the line, what lies beyond, in terms of literal growth, is no longer interesting or connected to the initial desire for exploration and construction of the temple of mycelium. As Clint moves on and hands off his creation, the passing of the torch begins and a rewiring of internal drives take-hold. What happens next for Clint will always have a portion of its origins in the metabolism of fungi! 

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The last thing I thought we'd be involved in when I first started cultivated mushrooms was sending phenotypes to space! If I step back and assess how we got here it absolutely blows my mind. Many mushrooms farmers, many entrepreneurs in general, have a solid sense of imposter syndrome...but here we are, It's 2024 and we are awaiting the arrival of three commercial mushroom phenotypes after a trip to the extraterrestrial space above our mighty green planet. For a couple of months now these phenotypes have hitched a ride on the ISS up there in the void and soon they return for laboratory investigation. Dr. Sara Webb is the amazing astrophysicist who got this project rolling by working with students to define and get a project off the ground, literally, and into space. While many questions still remain as to what will be discovered by bringing these organisms into and out of orbit, there is hope that fungi can be used in many different facets of space exploration, from food to building materials and everywhere in between. For all the footage from this project and conversation head on over to MycoWizards.com and check out all the great work Sara is up to at sarawebbscience.com

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The mythical Ween-loving duo of MadCap Mushrooms, Blake and Lindsey, jammed gears from the cold mountains of Vermont over to the blistery doom of Maine for what started as a tour of Cap N Stem and turned into a fully fledged podcast recording session! This podcast was recorded using the antiquated old mics from our earliest episodes, lending a quality we have always shot for. If you have ever been on a podcast you know the magic of the mic, the boom arm, the headphones and the perceived audience...the set and setting...it all opens up the doors to story-telling magick! Blake and Lindsey's origin story is steeped in a tea of youthful expansions and contractions from and back to the lands of their birth to the farthest reaches that one must go to find whatever it is one is dead set on discovering in this life. But in the end, it all comes back to the dawn of a joint obsession...mushrooms bursting from all corners of an enclosed living space until the spores replaced the notion of breathable air...this is their gift...as they consume our notions of a life without them, until all we can do is feed their need to be cultivated and consumed! In the end, the mushrooms get what the mushrooms want! So follow along, for this weeks MycoWizards episode is sure to offer some familiarity in the launch, the take over and the plans for expansion! 

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One of the best parts about 2024's mushroom festival jaunt was running into Max of @wumbogenetics at the @farwestfungievents and the @okmushroomfestival ... Max is on a mission from fungi, dedicated to perpetually developing a suite of myco-products, refining a variety of lab processes and protocols as well building connections in the cultivation community. The hustle it takes to get into any specialization of the fungi industry is an intense one and Max is carving a multitude of pathways in directions directly connected to his curiosities; from myco-papers to vegan Japanese mushroom dishes and every microscopy angle accessible, Wumbo Genetics is keeping it fresh and exciting. Check him out and follow his work HERE!

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WELCOME ONE AND ALL 

To the first episode in our new MycoWizards News segment!
 
In this episode we discuss what's new in the realm of organic certification and what that means for new mushroom farmers, old mushroom farmers and dog food food producers alike. 

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/12/23/2024-30211/national-organic-program-market-development-for-mushrooms-and-pet-food

See the video broadcast over on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/PAQUwAe0xnM  

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Deadly fungi and disinformation debunking is on the table for this episode of Broadcasts. News media sensationalizing a bummer story while demonizing a substance that wasn't even at the party.

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Phil Ross is a legend in the bay area myco-space. If you don’t know him, I suggest you start with the first video that really propelled Phil and the idea of myco-materials into the world entitled "Built With the Cleanest Technology on Earth: Nature" … Within this short video made only eight years ago, the fungal-bug that had and continues to bite us all is ever-present. It shows the possibilities, asks the questions and proceeds to answer only what the knowledge of the time had to offer. From an outsider's perspective, it has been a mad-dash to the “goldmine” of “myco-materials” fraught with cut throat competition and agents of chaos continually at work to feed the world's obsession with materialism instead of revolutionizing it. But Phil and his massive contributions to the concepts and execution to the production of things like “mushroom leather” make him a different kind of human. He is not dead set on generating some sort of massive intangible entity to gain myco-dominator-status, instead Phil is focused on opening up the often clandestine institutional research to all the underground mycological networks. With his project “Open-Fung” there remains a focus to build and develop a community within the world as opposed to contributing to the fallacy that is our social-media-dilema can drag us into some “new light”…are we really connected or are we simply refining our puritanical ways with 24-7 access to the main vein of the drama drip? What I got after spending time with Phil last summer was this: The man wants to have a conversation with fungi, he wants to communicate with it and I'm 100% sure he will in due time. The exhaustive efforts of such a deceptively simple idea, has been a road of unexpected maneuvers for Phil, but alas we don’t talk about any of that in this podcast, instead we focus on the ideas above materialism and even go back to a time when zines, flip-phones and gatherings of like minded people had a greater impact than all the collective likes and hearts and emoji-con chaos one can offer to the world’s collective of serotonin-seekers. Phil is the heart, keep an eye on this man’s movement and seek to understand what it means to Open The Fung!

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This broadcast from the secret lair brings you the cordy culture mafia, gatecrashing gatekeepers, Militaris tides a' rising and one dazed and confused co-host.

Bespoke scientific article here 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gxqBeIbpvyYTtMGPyu3yiw2vimbfPIfd/view?usp=sharing

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R.I.P.  capnstem Instagram account. Mike and Erik talk about what it the meta verse has done to us and many mushroom farms alike and what we can do moving forward to combat and rebel against the powers that be!

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Around the States in 80... mushroom festivals. The epoch of shroomie industry that sprang this phenomenon into being, what its like being recognized out in the world, navigating a jet-setting livelihood while being married to a farm, flow hood giveaway and more!

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The follies of those fallen to the orange reaper; neurospora. Generalization vs. Specialization, who wins that particular apocalypse? Don't put all your eggs in one super sack, the rolling giveaways continue! These talking points and more, on today's MycoWizards Broadcast.

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Can you eat Chestnut mushrooms and poop gold? Or maybe still it down and cure cancer in mice? We don't know but we're figuring it out in this beautiful Monday broadcast! So grab your pets and some tasty mushrooms cause it's gunna be a messy ride!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35363110/

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Like a bad idea, mushrooms can grow anywhere and on anything... and apparently anyone? From amphibians to your dorm room wallpaper, if conditions are right, the mycelial network will adopt your components and make them their own! Learn more about this weirdness in today's episode and stay tuned for more giveaways!

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Tony Bag-of-Donuts should not be in charge of shipping. Today the boys chat about the importance of refrigerated shipping and why CNS ain't here to ship it dry! Its bodies in bags, cellular death, overheated trash and more of that good Doom you've come to love!

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A royal pardon for the founder of the Silk Road. What could it mean? What new precedent has been set? What do we know? Not much, but tune in and find out anyway.

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Do you have a good Morel code? We like to think we do. Or at least we know of folks who do... Murder, mayhem and corporate tomfoolery abound in todays broadcast all about the mighty morel and how yes, you can cultivate them if you happen to be a pair of Norwegian twin genius'. This and more, including our first t-shirt GIVEAWAY!!!

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Tumultuous tariffs and other manure. Today's broadcast is all about poor leadership decisions from the top and how/why farmers need some buttressing for their sh*t umbrellas and a red ribbon road of loopholes to cartwheel through just to stay afloat. Beware the suits and grow your fruits, fam.

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David Medlock of Highland Fungi has been sending me the most incredible papers and research articles on all things fungi over the entirety of 2024. He has an unwavering dedication to obsessively digging for details to generate solutions to extremely complicated issues in the cultivation of the 5th kingdom. With a background in all things fabrication David engineers solutions around the problems we all eventually encounter while growing commercial amounts of mushrooms. His detailed observations of the chaos and outlined mis-steps, allow him to map as he toils over the complex variations of options while working towards the Eureka moments. Undoubtably his discoveries lead him further down the rabbit hole. So commit his name to memory as I will likely drop it from time to time in emails and broadcasts and beyond as credit must always be given in this burgeoning industry!

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And then there was space! come check out one of this weeks episodes with Gregor Jones! We talk NASA. We talk Space. We talk about things that don't belong in our face. Just kidding. 

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When you ask, We answer! tune information our second broadcast this week where Erik and Daniel hash out some basic ideas and answers to supplementation for our friends around the world and in the states! Mead! Aliens with middle fingers! Daniels exhaustion, the whole thing and a bag of chips.

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What are mushrooms good for if not a final resting place? take a took at one of this weeks episodes where Erik and Mike chat about the many uses for these funny shapes of water we call mushrooms!

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IF YOU WANT TO BE ENTERED TO WIN ONE OF OUR GIVEAWAYS, GO TO https://mycowizards.com/join_us AND BECOME A MEMBER AT ANY LEVEL! SHIRTS, MERCH, AGAR AND LIQUID CULTURES ARE UP FOR GRABS TO ALL MYCOWIZARDS SUBSCRIBERS!!!

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So we failed Mechanical Dedikaryotization. But that wont stop us! Today we talk with Gregor Jones about his findings and what we can improve on as we take the next steps in our fungal journey!

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IF YOU WANT TO BE ENTERED TO WIN ONE OF OUR GIVEAWAYS, GO TO https://mycowizards.com/join_us AND BECOME A MEMBER AT ANY LEVEL! SHIRTS, MERCH, AGAR AND LIQUID CULTURES ARE UP FOR GRABS TO ALL MYCOWIZARDS SUBSCRIBERS!!!

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In our very first episode I chat it up with Sam and Soraya of Nearby Naturals out of Orlando Florida. Check them out at www.nearbynaturalsfl.com 

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Eric Milligan is a humble man of many talents!  I'm extremely stoked to call him a friend and even more stoked to bring everyone this hilarious conversation we had a few weeks back! Check out www.nhmushrooms.com and give them a follow on the platforms of social media! ENJOY!

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What can I say about Neil Brent, king-myco-mad-man of the west coast? Well, I can say for certain I thought he was from the east coast, which is a huge compliment in my book, given our propensity for dark humor, blunt statements and strong whiskey....but seriously, Neil is a huge asset to the commercial mushroom world, he's got the focus, drive and innovative spirit one needs to thrive in this myco-world, so keep it up amigo and keep inspiring the masses...I expect more hilarious voicemails post-haste! Check out Neil's farm out at www.columbiamushroom.com

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Brian McShane and Randen Syjut are the myco-masterminds behind Detroit Mushroom Company.  Brian and I hadn't officially caught up before this conversation so it was delightful to riff on topics of hip hop, mushrooms, motorcycles for 4 hours. It's amazing and inspiring to hear how much respect Brian has for the folks in this industry.  He seems naturally cued into the mycologists who are making commercial mushroom magic happen every day in this wild world. Brian and Randen's spirit, positivity and focus through the early days of Covid-19 shut-downs really inspired Maine Cap N' Stem to re-approach the impending Doom with a sense of determination and swift movements to support this beautiful and blooming mushroom community and for that we will always be grateful!

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Garrett Wilkerson is the mycological meme-master and man behind the fast growing social media presence of Unicorn Bags. His genuine and intense stoke on all things mushroom related is nothing short of inspirational.  He is on an innovation quest in the name of sustainability for mycology and while he may not be fully aware of it, his meme's are a breath of fresh air in the extremely fast growing mushroom cultivation world. Garrett has unearthed the excitement and the nerdiness of the early shroomery days and blasted it back into relevant focus for the modern-myco-nerds colonizing the new social media platforms.        

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Lisa Pixley is an immeasurably amazing human. She is a professional printmaker, forager and wellspring of knowledge you wish you had on hand! She is one of the founders of Maine Cap N' Stem, if not the catalyst for its inception and our forward momentum into this industry. The lines might be a lil beer-blurry in regards to our first conversation about growing mushrooms after my departure from Arizona and arrival back into Maine, but I give her all the credit without a doubt. Her excitement for the basic human reactions and connections to mushrooms, foraging and creativity have motivated me and our company to continue on through all the ups and downs. Check her work out and head on over to her print shop if you're ever in Portland, Maine!    

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Brooks Worden is an old soul survivor of the New England winter turned West Coast dweller. His fascination for mycology has brought him to the reaches of this weird planet since the early 2000's. Brooks and I just missed one another back around 2010 in the Southwest of the States as I was departing Arizona and he was cruising into Aloha Medicinal's internship program. At that time social media hadn't kicked into top gear but the clandestine spore slingers of the 2000's were just starting to become aware of one another in the emerging connective digital-sphere. These days Brooks works for the fine folks at Far West Fungi and still seems 100% stoked on that West Coast MycoMania! If you're in SoCal go pay the homie a visit at FWF!

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Alex Winstead of Cascadia Mushroom is a steadfast gourmet mushroom cultivator from way back! A true myco-nerd and hero in the world of traditional mushroom setups, employing the use of ribbon mixers, pneumatic baggers, autoclaves and semi-complicated environmental controls from the era before House Of Hydro and InkBird.  I have personally been 'stalking' the progress of Cascadia since ~2011, as Alex had several quality youtube mini-docs out about his farm around then that truly inspired a lot of up and coming self proclaimed mycologists. So check them out, follow them online and if your in Washington State, go say hey!

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Michael and Liz Nail of Mile High Fungi are one of those amazingly connected couples that has been able to power through the development and growth of a mushroom business with a finely focused scope that holds true to the ebb and flow between hard work and enjoying life by keeping their mycological enterprise seasonal. Now with a kiddo in the picture their field of vision has widened up a bit and they seem as focused as ever and excited to continue on with farming fungi while raising their daughter Charlie Jade to be as tough and old school as a human from the mountains of Colorado needs to be to survive and thrive in this wild world! So go check 'em out if your in the Denver area and follow this radical family on their mycological journey!

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TR Davis of @earthangelmushrooms hustles and his enthusiasm for this specialty gourmet mushroom industry is as strong as ever. Over the last decade I've had the pleasure of watching TR grow Earth Angel Mushrooms starting with his early days on the scene of CMGN, an exclusive network of Commercial Mushroom Farmers dedicated to this craft. It's hard to describe how much TR has helped to propel this industry forward because it's still growing at a rapid rate, but his constant documentation, willingness to share information, share strains and keep close connections to the myco-farms spread across the world is an inspiration not unnoticed in the least! Check out his YouTube channel to absorb all of the knowledge he has accumulated and is willing to share! 

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Season Two Episode One: Tyler Crawford, the Wizard of Spawn production at Cap N Stem has been with us for quite a few years now. Hailing from Connecticut or Canada or Both, you’ll most likely find him expressing his wildness hiking the highest peaks of New England and Beyond like a young Frater Perdurabo inbetwixt mycological research and development at the Shroom Of Doom Headquarters here in Maine. If you’ve talked with Tyler you know how well informed and methodological this mycomaster is, so as part of this 2nd season of The MycoWizards Podcast we would like to announce the audio/visual production of MycoWizard Deep-Dives soon to be available at www.capnstem.com where Tyler Crawford and Erik Lomen will be covering single topics in conversational episodes from sterilization techniques to growing medias, production processes, fruiting techniques, facility layouts and much much more. So keep an eye and an ear out as this season of MycoWizards commences!

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Season 2 Episode 2: 

A lot of artists, musicians and farmers have a common thread in their development of place and space and the construction, deconstruction, expansion and contraction of many 4 walled rooms to fill very particular roles in the generation of their creations. Norman Fetter of Woodland Jewel seems to fit in this category of a person who delineates space for multi-potentiality from Music to Mycology and in that personality you find an old soul dedicated to the focus of their crafts and the creations at hand. With growth in this industry comes the need to reimagine and self-develop the spaces which you have at your disposal for cultivation and it seems to be a fascination and focus at Norm’s PA facility and home. 

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When Joe Weber started his Chicago based farm, Four Star Mushrooms, he held a deep fascination and interest in naturally occurring ecological systems, with their dialed in intricacies holding fast in this disposable world. The development of man-made-machines with algorithmic methodologies syncopated to deep human observations into naturally occurring organizations have bred some of the most stable, vertically integrated food systems possible in this fast growing world. Joe has been building these sentiments and frameworks into his business from the beginning, using computerization and controls to allow for further exploration, development and information gathering from the ecological systems at hand to assist in the growth of sustained food systems for the world at large. The humble and casual nature of Joe and his dedication to the nerd factor in mycology is apparent and embraced in this industry. 

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Brendan Linnane started Foggy Dew Fungi with a similar sentiment to most emerging mycologically minded business owners. It comes in stages, first as a spark, the visual and written volumes of seemingly ancient information available on an entire kingdom you never learned about in school appearing like an apparition one day and turning into an obsession overnight. You chase down new texts and old, searching out the dusty, tiny “mycology/mushroom” sections in every used book store within driving distance. You get sucked into the abyss of the Shroomery late into each night. You begin foraging, taxonomically identifying and then swiftly eating rare and sought after fungal phenotypes from the forest floors and trees. By the time you’ve solidified in your mind the 3-4 sure ways to identify and devour Chanterelles, winter falls and as the wilds retreat you explore grocery stores for imports, dried options and freshly cultivated varieties. You identify the farms that are growing mushrooms you have only read about and soon you have a flow hood, agar and a Presto or All-American in your closet...If this describes you, you are sunk, you are Brendan, you are all of us, the ones who caught the dangerous combination bug that blends an endless thirst for mycological knowledge with a genetic predisposition for working for yourself, working for the Foggy Dew Fungi!

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I’d assume Satchmo was one hell of a zen-calm yet lively jazz-wizard roaming the Americas and Europe like a madman on the horn through the 30s and 40s making myths in all the world’s clandestine clubs and dark alleyways, where spirit infused music spilled into the streets like smiles and wine. If I were to try to express who Josh Saul is to me and what he embodies as a mycologist, I'd have to say it’s a feeling similar to what one gets from soaking in the very early ear-candy jazz recordings, all crackle, pop and fuzz of the man himself, Satchmo. There is something about musicians getting into mycology; there is a mastery over the complexities of theory that requires much determination and deep study: experimentation and analysis on constant repetition. But after the mastery erupts a sort of Jazz in motion...and to me what Josh has done with Play Of Sunlight embodies the jazz of mycology. When you can live free-form in the chaos of a spore to store operation you can certainly attain this level of myco-jazz-wizardry, but I think it’s rare...rare enough to quote the late great Hunter S. Thompson, "There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die." 

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Only one Instagram account can rival @dunksmushrooms in fungal beauty and that's @bluffcityfungi . For Scott Avery Lisenby it's a family affair and the sincerity at the heart of his farm is alive and well in every way imaginable. Scott's got the drive and the focus of all great fungi-wizards, building his Memphis farm from the ground up inspired by innovation and pure hustle. In our couple hour conversation you'll find all the stories that generate the myco-myths, originating from the gentle and yet wildly tough spirit that is the Scott. It's one thing to call yourself a mushroom farmer and it's another to be genuinely skilled at the cultivation craft. This mushroom family is tuned, honed, talented and stoked, so enjoy the wild tale of Bluff City Fungi!

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Andrew Collier Reed: I’m fascinated by these radical myco-cats know by 3 names and there are a few...I know it’s largely a facebook phenomenon, but every time I heard his name mentioned, years before we had a solid back and forth, I heard all three names, like an ancient elder-futhark chant of sorts...and Andrew, he is an ancient soul, glued to runes and science fiction and their large projections on a immensely imaginative universe that’s conclusive in its own right and dedicated to the mission, no matter how mysterious it may seem when uttered out loud. Andrew and his myco-family have built a wildly interesting and successful system with their Mossback Syndicate. They generated the ultimate in low-tech methods to facilitate their associates' growth and have allowed support and growth of other companies around them to impact their sustainability in a positive way. Andrew’s Mossy Creek team might single handedly bring about substantial changes in the areas of phenotype development with their breeding programs and investment in liquid culture. While we don’t talk about it a ton in this conversation his King Blue strain has become so popular that it’s shadowed long standing phenos myco-farmers have depended on for decades...and that fact is true innovation at the microscopic beginnings of this entire world of mycology. 

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Cory Nellissen of HiFi Mycology has unbounded devotion to the exploration of his mycological endeavors. The study and systematization of mushroom cultivation demands patience, a quality one must possess in spades to make a go at the commercial cultivation game. Some days it feels like competition is closing in and other days it feels like you are in an oasis all of your own creation and you have brought the manna machine to the people! But the myco-machine requires constant analysis and maintenance to crank out the new age “flavor-aid” that is gourmet mushrooms. There is a kinesthetic motion once must maintain for a semblance of control over biological organisms and this requires no time to even entertain the ideas of defeat…remove that word from your vocabulary and soldier on. Dive back into old grow-logs, identify with the struggle of shroomery usernames and recognize the fight will be constant if you can’t achieve a balance in working with these single celled organisms! If you make it this far, you’ll know just where Cory is at, just where most masters of mycology are at and you will be a MycoWizard maintaining a myco-manna-machine all your own.   

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Aron Gonsalves and I go back to the beginning in this conversation. We recorded one evening at his farm house in southern Maine, almost empty and fully packed up, as he and his wonderfully kind wife Laura were about to embark on a journey to their new home with new beginnings in mind, down south away from the frozen north. Aron is a hustler, a gear grinder, a motorhead and a nerd on a lot of levels kin to myself. When I first heard a mycologist from Hawaii was coming to Maine, my young myco-entrepreneurial feathers were ruffled and it sort of gave me a kick in the ass to hustle harder and faster and really it was for good reason as you’ll come to discover in this episode. Aron has a fire in him that is admirable and after a decade of talking mycology constantly (and motorcycles not frequently enough) i realized how rare it is to communicate with comrades in the same industry as yourself day in and out and just how much forward momentum can be achieved from working closely together in a growing industry. Our friendship and working relationship was and is without a doubt a primary motivator for this podcast and I hope it inspires you and your fellow mycophiles to communicate and build momentum together like more than one magnetic weight on a true wheel barrowing down the dawn with fire, grit and teeth aglow!

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In another life, Dunk and I most likely crossed paths or perhaps we just ripped on two wheeled death traps up and down the same rugged streets of towns north of Boston. While he was running wild in the outlaw motorcycle scene, I was documenting and painting clandestine poets up and down the North Shore. There is a common thread that brings people to mycology and it finds its origins in the brains of those not interested in following anyone else’s life rules or rhythms. That break from socially acceptable directions has led a lot of wonderfully interesting people into this independent obsession with mushrooms. Maybe it’s that it takes us out of the world of people and into the world of our heads and the fifth kingdom. Many of us amateur mycologists are not what one would call “people pleasers”...there is a lack of patience in the drama of humanity where there is an abundance of patience for discovery, study and documentation. William Dunkerly has been building upon his myco-obsession ever since the day the mushroom-bug bit him and his journey has taken him in wild directions from basement growing to a commercial facility to value added frozen mushroom meals…one thing's for certain when speaking to and about the folks of the MycoWizard World, not one of them ever expected to be where they are today!

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BONUS EPISODE ALERT!
Maine Fungi Fest will be happening in Portland on May 14th, 2022. That’s coming up really fast! Tyler Crawford and Erik Lomen will be presenting a talk on commercial cultivation techniques and systems with a Q&A section. This conversation was recorded with the festival's organizer Jonathan Leavitt. Jonathan is an artist, a performer and a really talented musician who also has a long standing history that left a truly positive impact on Maine’s medical cannabis community. I learned a lot about Jonathan from his interview on In The Trees Podcast and it is worth hearing the whole tale from that side of the early 2000’s for some insight into why he is the right human for the organizational efforts of all things Fungi. All in all, Maine Cap N’ Stem is inspired by this mushroom boom and we are excited to share what we know to help sustain the growth of decentralized farms around the world. So come visit Tyler and Erik in the flesh the day of the festival! See you all there!

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