This weekend is more than just about breaded mushrooms for Gale Ferranto, even if her family’s farm stand continuously boasts one of the longest lines at the Kennett Square Mushroom Festival.
The two-day annual celebration, featuring educational courses on mushrooms, as well as plates of them fried, grilled, and served in nearly every other method of preparation, is a time for her to reflect on the three generations that came before her, all the way from Italy, to claim a stake in Chester County and its signature crop.
“Most family-run farms don’t last past two generations,” Ferranto, a lifelong Kennett Square resident and president of Buona Foods, said as hundreds of people milled down the borough’s main drag. ”Here, we have fourth-, fifth-, sixth-generation farms still going strong, and we’re proud of that.”
This year’s festival, Kennett Square’s 41st, is celebrating that intergenerational work, which grew a pastoral slice of the Philadelphia suburbs into an agricultural mecca: 64% of the country’s mushrooms are grown in Pennsylvania, and the majority of those farms are located here.
Recycling sustains mushroom farming
By its very nature, Ferranto said, mushroom farming is forward-thinking. Farms, like her family’s, rely on agricultural byproducts that otherwise would be discarded.
“Recycling is a pillar of everything we do,” she said. “It’s an important message to pass on to younger generations doing this work, because what we’re doing now is shaping the environment of farmwork to come.”
In the nearby exhibit tent, Richie Forte explained that work to festivalgoers, some from as close as Delaware County, and others who traveled from as far as British Columbia to learn about mushrooms.
Forte, who’s been in the mushroom business for 30 years, following his father’s lead, walked visitors through the growing process, from spawn planted in soil to cardboard cartons placed on supermarket shelves.
He said he couldn’t be happier answering questions about a crop he’s been handling since he was a teenager. His father, he said, did the same volunteer work for many past festivals.
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“In a world of private equity and big business, the fact that Kennett Square can still maintain this small, hometown feel is amazing,” he said.
“You get to a point in your life where you look around you, at the fabric of a community like this, and you realize it’s responsible for giving you everything you have.”
It’s a family affair
The farmers running the festival stands weren’t the only ones reveling in generational tradition. The event, and its signature, knit mushroom hats, have become an annual tradition for countless families in the region.
Rhiannon Betts has been driving up from Cecil County, Md., every summer for the festival for 21 years, and she and her family previously ran in the 5k race that accompanies it.
This year, Betts brought her boyfriend, Aidan Ward, with her to experience something that was integral to her childhood.
“This has always been an event that seems to put families first,” she said. “No matter what we have going on in the summer, we have to make it out here for this.”
For Corlan Blyskal and his wife, Emily, this year’s festival was the hopeful beginning of a new family tradition: The King of Prussia couple, decked out in homemade mushroom hats, brought their 10-month-old son, Knox, with them for their first visit to the event.
The self-described “mushroom-obsessed” couple gave their son his first bite of a raw mushroom, straight from the source.
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It was a big hit.