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/Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the Show.

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!     Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the Show.

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!   Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the Show.

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!Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the Show.

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 Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the Show.

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!Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! Support the Show.

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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.      Support the Show.

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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, Seattle1110 3rd AveSeattle, WA 98101WA State Attorney General Bob Ferguson1125 Washington Street SE, PO Box 40100Olympia, WA 98504VA Inspector General Hotline (53H)810 Vermont Avenue, NWWashington, D.C. 20420Washington State Office of the Insurance CommissionerP.O. Box 40255Olympia, 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 thousand members, all Marc needs is a couple hundred letters sent to the above addresses and you'll have helped the original community cultivator.Support the Show.

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!Support the show

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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!Support the Show.

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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!Support the Show.

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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!  Support the Show.

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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!!!Support the Show.

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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!  Support the Show.

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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! Support the Show.

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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! Support the Show.

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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!Support the Show.

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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..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..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..No matter where you’re at on your journey with mushrooms, we guarantee this festival will inspire something new!Support the Show.

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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!  Support the Show.

Become A MycoWizard today and keep this show rolling over at www.mycowizards.com!Support the show and be automatically entered into our monthly giveaways exclusive to MycoWizards Members! 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!Support the Show.