Tradd Cotter Returns to the 2014 Telluride Mushroom Festival

06 Aug Tradd Cotter Returns to the 2014 Telluride Mushroom Festival

Tradd Cotter is on a mission. On the face of it, a simple mission: “…healing the people and the planet, one mushroom and one cultivator at a time, reversing destructive cycles into creative forces.”

This creed is from the introduction of  Cotter’s new book, “Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation,” (available through Telluride’s Between the Covers Bookstore) and when you talk to the man, you understand that he really believes it is that simple. Notice I said “That simple,” not “That easy.” While he acknowledges that growing mushrooms can be commercially rewarding, Trad Cotter cautions that it is more important to learn about, learn from the mushrooms, to go slowly and to understand. Better to have a thousand small cultivators than a few wildly commercially successful Facebooks or Googles.

At the 2014 Telluride Mushroom Festival Tradd Cotter will be right there in front of you, every time you look around. Take a look at the Festival schedule:

Friday, August 15, Cotter and Ron Spinosa will be leading a day-long Mycoremediation workshop (space is limited, $200 fee).

Sunday, August 17, Cotter is involve in three events, including a scavenger hunt, with an eye to using our garbage as a medium for cultivating mushrooms.

Monday, August 18, Cotter brings it home, makes it personal: Mycoremediation in Telluride; and later that day his presentation “Closing Pandora’s Box” talks about “Fungal Solutions to Pollution, Pandemics, and Global Starvation,” and how fungi can help with solutions to our biggest challenges in this millenium.

And finishing up on Tuesday, August 19, three more presentations, including “Training Mushrooms to Eat Pollution” and a “Mock Oil Spill.”

Tradd Cotter

Again from the introduction to “Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation”:

“…think with an opportunistic yet minimalistic approach, much like a mushroom, taking what it needs to survive and then returning resources to its ecosystem so they can be used by others…”

But it has to be said, Tradd Cotter is a bit biased in these discussions: his wife, Olga, could not be here this year- she is home with baby Heidi, still too young to travel.

Cotter mentioned that there’s something brewing (pun intended) on the mycobrew front. Need your immune system boosted? Watch for announcements about “health-food beer” during the festival.

I should add one caveat with respect to following Tradd Cotter: Take this step cautiously. It could be life changing.

For more information listen to my conversation with Cotter: