We were lucky to catch up with Val Ray King recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Val Ray thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start big picture – what are some of biggest trends you are seeing in your industry?

We are currently experiencing a cultural moment in which mushrooms are receiving a lot of attention: mushrooms themselves are the trend. For about 5 years now I’ve been curious about their staying power- it’s not just the psychedelic renaissance that has hold of the publics attentions, but the entire possibility of ecological reform. Concepts of mycoremediation (removal of toxins from an environment through the introduction of certain mushroom mycelium) are gaining a lot of traction. Then on a more consumer based level, people are more interested in eating them or supplementing their health regimens than ever before; some simply think the fruiting bodies of mushrooms are adorable and want to see them on everything.

I specialize in the wholesale production of Cordyceps militaris, a bright orange mushroom known to increase energy and reverse aging. In nature, these mushrooms can be found parasitizing ants or caterpillars, a concept borrowed by the popular video game and now HBO series, “The Last of Us”. While the concept of this series is pure science fiction, it has brought a lot of attention to the work that i do, increasing the demand and popularity of this fungal fruiting body I am so fond of. I think the trends in my field are those of cultural morphic resonance: emulating the interconnected nature of mushrooms and demonstrating our potential to heal together.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Like most mushroom people, I found my way into this field by accident. What started as a curiosity became my full time obsession as well as means of income. I have no formal education, yet I have taught myself (with the help of other citizen scientists) microbiology, built myself a laboratory, and figured out a way to sustain myself through experimental relationships with an organism much smarter than I am.

I began foraging 8 years ago. When I moved to Philly 6 years ago, I found my mushroom people immediately and got a job at the local culinary mushroom farm- cultivating, growing, harvesting, making connections, generally learning the ins and outs of the mushroom business. I started my own llc in 2021, following a pandemic-inspired obsession with the cultivation of Cordyceps mushrooms. i figured out how to mass produce Cordyceps (along with a few other medicinal mushroom species), and through business relationships between myself and other companies that specialize in branding value added products (most of them local to PA) , I have found a comfortable little corner of the wholesale industry to settle into.

I find the mushroom community so special because it really allows for glitches in the system like me to flourish. In a field where anyone can teach themselves, there is no academic gate keeping, and patriarchal patterns are seriously challenged. We have wonderful teachers in the queendom fungi: there is so much to learn from such a de-centralized entity thats entire existence is founded in mutual thriving.

Along with the wholesale of medicinal mushrooms to popularly branded companies, my work includes facilitating mycologically minded workshops alongside my partner in life and love (the artist lydon frank lettuce). We create a container for an in depth, and often challenging, conversation about the intersections between queer theory and queer ecology, using mycology as a thread to weave the space (physical and metaphysical) together. You can find more information about these workshops (and booking opportunities) on either of our websites: impendingdoomrelief.com, or lydonfranklettuce.com.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

To be honest, I never thought I would be living the life I live today. Prior to living in the city, I had lived nomadically for a decade. Traveling around the country from gig to gig, I mostly engaged in seasonal farm work (raking blueberries in the summer, trimming weed in the fall, planting trees through the winter). Otherwise I would spend my time on off-the-grid land projects, feeling at odds with a world ruined by late stage capitalism. There I would navel gaze, wondering if I would ever feel at home in such a strange, alien place as this violently colonized piece of land I was born on. I felt disconnected- to myself and to the land. I think that a lot of people feel this way. I was particularly uncertain of how I could carve out space for myself to just be in what I considered to be a bleak Darwinian nightmare.

Mycology changed all this for me. Through the mycological reality/ecological concept of mutual thriving, I learned that eat-or-be-eaten wasn’t the only option out there for survival. I moved to so-called Philly (or occupied Lenape land) to be closer to my friends and to put down roots. I think feeling disconnected from the colonized land we occupy is painful on so many levels; it is the backlash of a violent history that sought (and still seeks) to homogenize our species for someone else’s distorted agenda. Through my relationship with mushrooms and all things fungal, I have begun to heal. The mushrooms are perhaps the most ecologically resilient of all organisms: their strategy? Diversity. We have so so much to learn from them. I am forever grateful to be in relationship with them, as a means of sustenance and sustainability, respectfully.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Something I am constantly trying to unlearn is my relationship to scarcity. When you own a business, your relationship to finance changes, period. You start dealing with capital in a way that other people cannot relate to- money stops being this thing you spend on yourself and starts being the life-source of your business. I can’t think of the last time I purchased something that wasn’t a tax write off.

There is this precarity to being self-employed; I can guess about how much income I’ll generate each month, but sometimes I am wrong. There are some things you simply cannot prepare for (like equipment needing replacing, or your truck needing a suspension rebuild, or the dog eating something weird and needing a 600$ worth of x-rays…). Life happens. I had to learn to undo this deeply programmed impulse to hoard resources and to get comfortable with the reality that money is just one of three currencies.

The three currencies are: time, energy and money. They will each be in a constant state of ebb and flow, and none of them can be conjured out of thin air. Organization, observation and cunning are crucial to a successful distribution of these currencies as they come and go. Not acting on every impulse informed by scarcity is crucial. There will always be more of everything (at least for now).

Contact Info:

• Website: impendingdoomrelief.com
• Instagram: @impendingdoomrelief_llc