By Pepper Fisher

PORT ANGELES – A Port Angeles man who grows and sells mushrooms out of his own home is now working hard to get annual mushroom festival established in the city.

David Rogers owns Maddie’s Mushrooms, marketing freshly grown Shiitakes, lion’s mane, oyster mushrooms and more. His vision is to celebrate one of the northwest’s most abundant wild harvests with gourmet cultivation workshops, guided forages, cooking demonstrations, talks on mycroremediation (which can be described as environmental cleanup using fungi), training truffle dogs and more.

“A big hope and dream for our farm has always been community education. We really want to get other people excited about mushrooms, because there’s so much potential. It’s just a sustainable food source, the health benefits are just unbelievable. But in the meantime, trying to set up something like a festival where we can get a bunch of speakers together to try and educate our community on some of these topics is just very exciting.”

But Rogers’ interest extends beyond the mushrooms on our dinner plates. He wants his festival to highlight another discussion that has become a growing topic around the country, and that’s the decriminalization of psilocybin mushrooms and a short list of similar psychotropic plants, known as entheogens, for personal use as well as clinical applications in treating depression, addiction, PTSD and more.

Cities such as Denver, Oakland and Santa Cruz have already decriminalized psilocybin. Much closer to home is the City of Port Townsend, where the City Council did so in 2021. The effort to make that happen was led in part by Erin Reading, co-founder of the group Port Townsend Psychedelic Society.org.

“Yeah, the city council passed our resolution. It’s de facto decriminalization, which basically means that the police department has made it lowest priority and been directed not to spend any funds on enforcing any laws related to entheogens. Although, when they passed our resolution, they modified it a little bit, and they basically made it so that in non-public places, it’s decriminalized. It took a lot of effort and a lot of time, a lot of letters, and a lot of people to get it passed, but we did get it passed.”

Reading says they’re now working with County Commissioners to try and get a resolution that calls upon the Sheriff’s office and the Prosecutor to adopt a decriminalization policy.

In the meantime, Rogers has his own hills to climb in working with local officials for permits, possible grants and, of course, a venue. He says he’s reached out the Chamber of Commerce for advice, and he’s talking to potential vendors, presenters, and musicians. All to bring to Port Angeles its first-ever mushroom festival, ideally this October or the next.