40th annual Mushroom Festival takes root in Kennett Square, celebrating heritage and all things fungi

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The 40th annual Mushroom Festival bloomed over several streets of Kennett Square this weekend, featuring 229 vendors, mushroom-growing demonstrations and the pungent smell of mushrooms.

The “mushroom capital of the world” hosts the annual mushroom-themed festival to celebrate the heritage of the Pennsylvanian borough.

Gale Ferranto is one of the many Kennett Square residents with ties to the area’s mushroom farming heritage.

She is president of Buono Foods, a mushroom production company that stemmed from her grandfather’s farm in the early 1900s, which remains one of 53 family-owned and operated farms in the area.

Ferranto said those farms are responsible for about 64% of the mushrooms grown nationwide.

Ferranto, who also serves as the festival coordinator, said the event started small in 1985, with just a few industry growers and shippers.

“[They] thought it would be a great idea for mushrooms, since Pennsylvania leads the country in mushroom production,” said Ferranto. “So they got together and said, ‘Let’s celebrate mushrooms.’”

In addition to celebrating the edible fungi, another purpose of the festival is to give back to the Kennett Square community.

“I’m a mushroom farmer, so I’m going to be swayed, but I’m quite proud that we could still live in the suburbia together and get along with the community,” she said. “The mushroom industry supports this community and this town and these people and these nonprofits.”

Kennett Square’s love for mushrooms has taken root across state borders, with visitors from Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. The festival expects nearly 100,000 attendees over the weekend.

The 2025 Mushroom Festival

Nick Tonetti and Megan Helin were first-time visitors to the festival. The pair got an Airbnb nearby and made a weekend out of their short trip from Philly.

They tried four different mushroom soups on their first day and were looking for more on their second.

Helin and Tonetti compared the mushroom festival to the ones in Philadelphia. “It wasn’t like shoulder-to-shoulder packed,” Helin said. “
So it was actually enjoyable.”

“Even all the vendors have been really nice,” Tonetti said. “There’s so much good art and crafts to buy, but no one’s being pushy, which is really nice. It lets you feel safe to walk in and look at things without feeling like someone’s going to try and sell you something.”

Although not all the vendors were inherently mushroom-themed, many brought out either special recipes or crafts to match the mushroom madness. Still, there were some dedicated mushroom-related vendors, like The Royal Mushroom Society.

Joanne Day, a calligrapher, mushroom forager, photographer and artist, has attended the event in every way. She spent one year as an attendee, another as an artist in the painted mushroom competition and this year as a vendor.

Day said she loves being out in the woods, with every hike “turning into a treasure hunt of sorts.”

“Who can find the most interesting mushroom, the most mushrooms, you know, the most unique mushrooms,” she said.

Day either photographs the foliage or turns them into collages. However, Day’s point of pride is the variety of mushrooms she’s eaten, 37 by her count.

Something Day recognized as a change over the last few years is “the interest in mushrooms has really exploded,” she said.

“To see that’s gone from the pop culture, like the Mario mushroom, the red and white mushroom … to people actually being interested in the real stuff, you know, the stuff in finding the woods. The stuff you can eat, not just the psychedelic ones,” she said.

The festival highlights this emerging interest in mushrooms, with farmers volunteering their time to explain the growing process. It’s also grown in size in recent years, partly because of increasing public interest and support from the community, Ferranto said.

And, when asked about the notorious smell that is attributed to Kennett Square and its mushroom industry, Ferranto said, “We are growing a lot of mushrooms in this area in a very small, you know, per square mile. So that is one of the reasons why it’s pungent.”

Editor’s Note: Nate Harrington’s WHYY News internship has been made possible thanks to the generous support from the Dow Jones News Fund O’Toole Family Foundation Internship.