About Enso
Farm + Forage

Michael Heim

Owner-ForageR-educator

Michael Heim is a forager, cultivator, educator, and guide based in Lafayette, Colorado. His work sits at the intersection of field ecology, food sovereignty, and community education, shaped by nearly two decades of study, teaching, and time in nature.

He grew up in Nebraska, hunting and fishing with his father and learning early how to read a landscape and move through it with patience. That same instinct later drew him to vinyl records and estate sales, searching for things of value that others had overlooked. In foraging he found the practice that brought all of it together.

The turn began with a book. In 2007, as a political science undergraduate at the University of Nebraska Omaha, Michael read Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and started asking different questions about where food comes from and who controls it. A horticulture class the following year pointed him toward the land, and by 2009 he was identifying his first mushrooms along the Platte River.

In 2010 Michael moved to Boulder and joined the Colorado Mycological Society (CMS), the beginning of a relationship that would eventually lead him to its leadership. He also began building a working knowledge of the restaurant industry from the inside, spending years with The Kitchen Restaurant Group and advancing from bartender and server to management, helping open multiple locations across the region and country. These years introduced him to the chefs and kitchens he would eventually supply with wild foraged and cultivated ingredients.

In 2012 a chance introduction to herbalist and ethno-botanist Erin Smith led to a position at the Center for Integrative Botanicals in Boulder. There Michael taught his first classes, including a series called The Botanist's Bar exploring herbal medicine and mixology through the lens of bitters, and co-led his first public foray alongside Jared Urcheck of Boulder High Country Mushrooms. Jared taught him to cultivate mushrooms, a practice Michael has pursued since 2012 and now extends through consultation for cultivation projects of all scales. Michael also volunteered during this period at the Sam Mitchell Herbarium of Fungi at the Denver Botanic Gardens, assisting with the accessioning and cataloguing of native Colorado species. Time in the collections alongside Vera Evenson-Stuckey, author of Mushrooms of the Rocky Mountain Region, and Andrew Wilson, Associate Curator of the herbarium, deepened his scientific grounding and his commitment to regional mycology.

His first trip to the Telluride Mushroom Festival in 2013 remains a personal landmark. A foray there with Gary Lincoff, author of the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, showed him what teaching in the field could be: rigorous science paired with genuine personality, a standard that has shaped his own workshops ever since. He has returned to Telluride four times, most recently as an educator leading workshops and forays.

In 2015 Michael founded Ensō Farm and Forage. The company designs guided foraging experiences, wild dinners, and nature education programs across the Colorado Front Range and Rocky Mountains. That same year he spent a month interning at Aloha Medicinals in Carson City, Nevada, a leading functional mushroom supplement company. In 2016 he earned his Certified Wild Mushroom Expert credential from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, one of a small number of individuals in the state authorized to identify and approve wild mushrooms for commercial culinary use. He also holds active USFS outfitter permits across multiple ranger districts.

In 2016 Michael became the newsletter editor for CMS and joined its board, and in 2018 he served as its president, doubling membership and modernizing operations during his tenure. He remained on the board through 2019. In 2019 he appeared on a panel at the world premiere of Fantastic Fungi at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder. His restaurant career wrapped up in the same window: after Blackbelly in 2019 and Moxie Bread Co. in 2020, two operations whose deep commitments to local sourcing further shaped his sense of how food moves through a community, he left the industry in 2020 to focus on Ensō and his teaching full time.

Today Ensō supplies wild foraged and cultivated mushrooms, herbs, and plants to some of Colorado's most respected kitchens, including Frasca Food and Wine, The Wolf's Tailor, Bruto, and Moxie Bread Co.

Teaching and guiding are at the heart of Michael's work. Over the last several years he has led educational workshops and forays at the Telluride Mushroom Festival, the Eagle Mushroom Festival, and the Santa Cruz Mountain Mushroom Festival hosted by Farwest Fungi. He leads private forays for chefs, restaurant teams, and culinary groups, including Chefs Collaborative, a North American network of restaurant professionals committed to local sourcing and clean food. He also runs youth and community education programs, and has partnered with Groundworks Denver on multiple occasions. He has taught for the Denver Botanic Gardens, Walking Mountain Science Center, The Living Arts School, Escoffier Culinary Institute, Fjällräven, Myco Tech, and others, and has taught with Robert Rogers, author of The Fungal Pharmacy.

In 2021 Michael co-founded Mycolove Farms LLC in Fort Lupton, Colorado, and served as chief operating officer for the first four years. Over that period he helped scale the company to thousands of pounds of USDA-certified organic functional mushrooms annually. The company grows functional mushrooms, extracts bioactive compounds, and sells direct to consumer and through private label. Michael remains a board member and co-owner, and draws on this commercial cultivation experience in his ongoing consultation work with growers and producers at all scales.

Michael travels to Sweden annually to support a long-term permaculture project on a Swedish farm, working to amplify native medicinal and culinary fungi and flora as part of a broader food forest vision. He helped the farm secure Krav certification, the Swedish counterpart to USDA Organic and among the most rigorous organic standards in Europe.

In 2024 he authored the polypore chapter of Foraging Mushrooms of the Rocky Mountains: Finding, Identifying, and Preparing Edible Wild Mushrooms (Colorado Mycological Society and Pikes Peak Mycological Society, 2024) and contributed several of the book's recipes.

In 2025 Michael traveled to Patagonia in southern Chile to collaborate on a documentary exploring ethno-mycology and mushroom medicine. The expedition began with a fully immersive foraging experience near the southern tip of Chile, followed by seven days of foraging, field documentation, and conversations with local communities about traditional relationships with fungi. Filmed by Francisco Gómez and Felipe Gajardo, the documentary El Viaje: De la Consciencia a la Ciencia premiered in Santiago in spring 2026.

Michael helped launch MycoReach, a nonprofit collaborative initiative dedicated to open-source mycology, citizen science, and building a global community of enthusiasts, researchers, and environmentalists around fungi. Its mobile mushroom lab, outfitted to bring the lab into the field, is a true anchor for community-driven science. In 2026 he joined the board of the Fungal Diversity Survey (FUNDiS), a nonprofit mapping fungal diversity across North America through citizen science, a mission that dovetails naturally with the field education, community forays, and open-source work he leads through Ensō and MycoReach. He also stays active with CMS, leading forays and pursuing microscopy through its sub-group as he continues to deepen his knowledge of regional fungi.

His work has been covered by the Denver Post, Boulder Weekly, Boulder Lifestyle, Mountain Gazette, Heritage Radio Network, Restaurant Unstoppable, and others. He is currently based in Lafayette, Colorado, where Ensō Farm and Forage continues to grow.. 

Friends of Enso