Happy Colorado Sunday, friends.
We cover a lot of ground below, so I’ll just make this quick. With all the attention focused on the regulation and production of psilocybin the past couple of years, it’s easy to forget about the types of beautiful and delicious fungi we are free to buy (or forage) and use at will. This week’s cover story by Nancy Lofholm is a fascinating look at what it takes to build a business from growing mushrooms.
Dana Coffield
Editor
The Cover Story
Finicky tastes mushroomed into full fungi appreciation
Monumental Mushrooms scientist Rhysa Ferris inspects grain bags inoculated with mushroom strains in her growing facility in Palisade. (William Woody, Special to The Colorado Sun)My early-in-life experiences with mushrooms were, in my best recollection, nauseating. Growing up in the Midwest meant casseroles on every dinner table. Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup was a mainstay in most of those dishes.
I was a finicky kid.
I wouldn’t touch the fat on good Nebraska beef, and I didn’t like those teeny brown mushroom bits studding the casseroles. To me, their spongy texture resembled fat. I drove my family crazy sifting through my tuna and noodles or chicken and rice to ferret out the mushroom bits and shove them into a tiny pile at the edge of my plate.
Thankfully I got over that long before visiting Monumental Mushrooms in Palisade. I was wowed by the beauty of the Snow Whites, the lion’s manes, the Russian golden trumpets and the blue oysters. I was fascinated by the life cycle of mushrooms that sprouted from webs of mycelium: They truly are a kingdom unto themselves. Mushroom “mad scientist” Rhysa Ferris’ love for her fungi progeny was infectious.
I stopped at a farmstand when I left Monumental and stocked up on some mushrooms for a delicious dinner of seared lion’s manes. They looked just like juicy sliced steak on the plate. There were no bits left to push aside.
I now understand what would cause someone like Ferris to build a life around fungi. Mastering that kingdom in the way that Ferris and other Colorado fungi growers have requires an A+ intellect and a Darwinesque level of curiosity.
It also requires a bit of hey-don’t-forget-me stamina in a state where all the current fungi focus is on psychedelic mushrooms. Gourmet mushroom growers are a reminder that mushrooms are also just plain good to eat.
This once-finicky kid needs no more convincing. I have a file of newly saved recipes for mushroom stroganoff, mushroom piccata, mushroom pate, mushroom pasta, mushroom toast …
READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE
Nancy Lofholm | Reporter
The Colorado Lens
Last week Michael Booth served up an interesting story about how persistent drought has given new life to beetles and worms chewing through Colorado forests. But what does that damage really look like? Photojournalist Tri Duong went to Buckingham Park along Lefthand Canyon Road north of Boulder on Monday and took a very close look.
Bark beetle damage causes needles on evergreen trees to turn a rusty color that is visible to people traveling along Lefthand Canyon Drive. (Tri Duong, Special to The Colorado Sun) Bark beetles are tiny, but do intense damage to trees, like these travel lines carved into a trunk. (Tri Duong, Special to The Colorado Sun) Sometimes there is frass, or sawdust, on the ground below trees where pine bark beetles have bored into the branches. (Tri Duong, Special to The Colorado Sun) A young pine tree along Lefthand Canyon Trail with visible damage from pine tip moths. (Tri Duong, Special to The Colorado Sun) A pine bark beetle sits at the tip of a pine needle along Lefthand Canyon Trail. (Tri Duong, Special to The Colorado Sun)Dana Coffield | Editor
Flavor of the Week
Bee the change in your garden
Flower seeds specially packaged for Generation Wild are available at almost 600 places in Colorado, including some Little Free Libraries. (Generation Wild photo)Even if you missed the National Gardening Day kickoff a few weeks ago, you still can commit to planting a row for Colorado bees and butterflies — for free, thanks to the Generation Wild. The Great Outdoors Colorado initiative has 126,000 seed packets available for the taking at nearly 600 distribution points statewide, including recreation centers, malls, libraries and Little Free Libraries.
It’s technically a program for kids, so there are a lot of related activities planned, but no one is going to check your ID when you pick up packets of seeds for plants like yarrow, milkweed and penstemon, selected to help support Colorado’s struggling pollinators.
Dana Coffield | Editor
SunLit: Sneak Peek
“Bitter Creek” tells many-faceted story of Rock Springs Massacre
“All day he swallows / his tears. All day he tries / not to think of the past. He prays / his lamp keeps flickering / and the old canary keeps singing.”
— From “Bitter Creek”
EXCERPT: Author Teow Lim Goh ventures into the epic poetry realm to tell the decadelong story of labor unrest in the Union Pacific coal mines in the 19th century — and the anti-Chinese violence that erupted amid a miners strike. In “Bitter Creek,” she touches on all points of view reflecting both empathy and deep research into the Rock Springs Massacre in Wyoming that claimed 28 lives. Think you’re not that into poetry? Read the excerpt and think again.
READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT
THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: When Teow Lim Goh drove through Rock Springs in her early 20s, before she’d become a writer, she remembers experiencing a “strange feeling.” Years later, she returned to that location to research what would become “Bitter Creek. Here’s more from her fascinating Q&A:
SunLit: What’s the most important thing you’d like readers to take from this book?
Teow Lim Goh: The ways we dehumanize people we see as the Other are often so embedded in the culture that they seem to be natural and inevitable. And this dehumanization often stems from fear. In one of the poems, I portray a young white girl playing in the yard when a group of Chinese workers walks by, and a parent admonishes her to go inside, saying, “You don’t know what men like that will do to girls like you.” I was that girl, in Singapore in the 1990s, and the monsters at the gate were South Asian migrant workers who provided the labor for a construction boom.
The violence of the Rock Springs Massacre — as well as many of today’s headlines — is rooted in seemingly small moments like this.
READ THE INTERVIEW WITH TEOW LIM GOH
Kevin Simpson | Writer
Sunday Reading List
A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.
Amore Pizza truck owner Jigo Tiger tosses a pizza crust inside his vehicle, which is mostly powered by electricity. Food trucks and their owners gathered in Denver on Tuesday to talk about grants offered by the Regional Air Quality Council to help swap out their generators for battery power. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)? Heading down the final straightaway of the legislative session, things are moving fast. In the out column: a bill to place climate warnings on gas pumps, a plan to accelerate the state’s clean energy transition by a decade, and a measure that would have allowed victims of long-past acts of sex abuse to sue. Still in play: A proposal to give tax breaks to data centers and new rules for ride-share companies. And a shocker: The Senate overrode the governor’s veto of a bill regulating social media sites.
? By the way, the legislature did pass the state budget featuring $1.2 billion in cuts and pain for many agencies and programs. Brian Eason reports that local governments are feeling plenty of anxiety because of the state cuts and the looming federal funding slowdowns.
? Some of last year’s legislative business is getting a lot of attention nationally as a rule governing the use of artificial intelligence is being shaped. Tamara Chuang gives a careful explanation of a confusing topic.
? The tariff war is causing big problems for outdoor gear manufacturers in Colorado, even one that makes its products in Salida from materials made in the U.S., Jason Blevins reports. Meanwhile, the state has joined in a multistate lawsuit to block Trump’s tariffs.
?A U.S. District Court judge in Colorado has blocked the deportation of Venezuelans accused of being members of a gang. Jennifer Brown reports the ruling is centered on matters of due process for people held at the immigration detention center in Aurora.
? Denver Water is going to the mat over a U.S. District Court order that stopped work on the Gross Reservoir Dam expansion. Jerd Smith sat down with Denver Water boss Alan Salazar.
? Douglas County’s commissioners want to convert the county to home rule status. The trouble is, Olivia Prentzel reports, they’ve been meeting in secret to get the work done — at least according to citizens who sued alleging violations of Colorado’s open meetings laws.
? A Denver City Council committee Wednesday forwarded on a proposal for $70 million in public funding for the new National Women’s Soccer League team stadium in Santa Fe Yards. Lincoln Roch went to Kansas City to see how a very similar NWSL project there turned out.
? Three of the 15 wolves translocated to Colorado from British Columbia have died, the most recent in Rocky Mountain National Park. Michael Booth writes that the mortality rate so far doesn’t exceed expectations.
Dana Coffield | Editor
Thanks for hanging out with us this awesome Colorado Sunday. We’ll see you here next week and maybe on May 16 for Colorado SunFest 2025. Still need a ticket? You get a big discount for being a Colorado Sunday subscriber. Find the details here: coloradosun.com/colorado-sunfest.
— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun
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