Growing Mushrooms with Field and Forest
Alisa Nappa
In todays episode we sit down with the fine fungal folks at Field and Forest to talk about their beginnings, the evolution of the mushroom growing industry in the US, how people can grow their own mushrooms at home or at a large scale, new mushroom species they predict will take off here in the US, and so mush more.
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TRANSCRIPT
0:11 You're listening to the mushroom revival podcast. I'm your host Alex Dora. Welcome. Welcome to the mushroom universe, we're diving deep. Today we're going to talk about all about cultivating mushrooms with field and forest. And we're super excited a little background on the show. We're obsessed with mushrooms. And we'd like to bring on experts and guests from all around the world to geek out with us. And something else that we just started is that we're doing a mushroom giveaway on this podcast. So if you're listening, and you want to win some free mushroom products, all you have to do is enter the link in the bio that we're going to put wherever you're listening, and you have a chance to win some free, some free goodies. So enter that. And without further ado, let's jump into it. How're you guys doing? Right? Real good. Thank you. Awesome. Who are you guys? 1:10 Oh, let Joe go first. Hi, my name is Joe. 1:15 Last name is long and polish craft check. I'm one of the owners of field and Forest Products Incorporated in beautiful passionate Wisconsin. 1:25 Thanks for what you're doing. It's awesome. Yeah, Joe and his wife, Mary Ellen started the company. And I joined about eight years ago. My name is Lindsay Bender, and I'm the mycologist here. So I work mainly in the lab, but dabble with various other parts of this small business. 1:46 So this question is for both of you, Joe, I'm curious first how you and your wife got into it in 1983. Is that right? That's correct. Yeah. Well, 1:59 you know, I'm gonna give you the Reader's Digest version, because this could go on all day with how we got started. But 2:06 you know, actually, it starts at birth, right? Because both of us are Polish. And I think mushrooms and our ethnicity is genetically linked. So being, you know, pushed you sent, both of us actually had fathers and grandfathers that took us mushroom on tape. And I really didn't realize the impact on my life with dad until later on when I decided that my calling was in botany. And with botany comes a whole other world that's associated with it. So 2:40 we've been 2:42 we were dabbling with things until 1983, when we first got involved with mushroom cultivation because 2:51 of a publication that came out of the forest products. And the cultivation she Tachyon small diameter harvest logs. So we took a look at them, we said, hey, this is something that we want to do. And we can do, because we have access to the resources. And from there, it's been 3:10 a very interesting ride, to say the least. 3:15 When you're working with mushrooms, it's always an interesting ride out. That's for sure. 3:20 And so how does the lead mycologist that field and forest get into diving headfirst into the lab? What What was your upbringing that got you, you know, interested in in more the deeper aspects of mycology? Yeah. So as a student always before college, and certainly within college, I just fell in love with biology, and in particular ecology and how systems and everything is, you know, intermingled and works together and communicates and impacts one another, and you know, all of the different variables that go into a seemingly simple question. 4:01 So I really liked working outdoors, I thought maybe the natural resources would be great, but just given Wisconsin and its seasonality. working outdoors in the winter is not not really pleasurable working in the summer with all the mosquitoes is less pleasurable. So while I loved ecology, I also fell in love with working in the lab and micro and mycology, and kind of pairing those two together. It turns out, you know, cultivating Kotaki outdoors is just like, the perfect mix of all of my passions, you know, through the previous years, so I really, you know, lucked out finding something that tied everything together. 4:46 And you guys crafted the first organic standards for certified organic mushroom cultivation on logs, which is an amazing feat. What was that? What did that process look like? You know, 5:00 I know for us, we went through organic certification for cordyceps cultivation and talking with so many different mushroom cultivators in the US, it's it's always really difficult to deal with organic certifiers who just, you know, mushroom cultivation is so alien to them. I know we're talking to some cultivators in Maine. And they have their mushroom cultivation is considered under the category of livestock. 5:29 And so I'm just curious as being the first like, what, what did that process look like? Was it super difficult and confusing? Or was this super easy? 5:38 Oh, wow, that goes way back. Alex, let me see how my memory serves me on that one. I think that was 1988. We were asked by CIA, to craft standards for mushroom cultivation, to organic standards. And I think at that time, that was that was when, you know, USDA got involved. And so we kind of said yes. And we 6:07 decided that we were going to do everything based on natural logs, because at that time, cyberspace cultivation wasn't really in the picture, or it was just beginning. So what we did we crafted standards for log based cultivation, and we differed on anything with a Garrick has, because that was not our field of expertise. And to be honest, in 1988, I don't know what our field of expertise was. But we were we were at so we were asked to do it, which we did. And I think that the 6:39 upshot of that is that with organic inspection, it seems that every year we're training a new inspector about mushroom cultivation, because it's such an outlier, that when an inspector shows up, they say, Hey, have you been in business for two years? What can I learn from you? So we've been trained inspectors all along here, and boy, it certainly has evolved from growing mushrooms on logs organically to action on substrate production on certified manures. And you name it, it's it's really got more involved with each passing decade. But it was good to be involved initially, to try to set the standards and 7:20 keep things rolling in an organic way that we feel is very appropriate. And for mushroom cultivation. 7:30 Yeah, I agree. It's, you know, I wish everyone could go through the process. 7:36 Even consumers alike, it's, it's a lot more difficult than people think I thought it was going to be really easy. And there's so many aspects of the certification that I didn't realize were a part of organic certification. So it's just really interesting from, you know, the cleaners use on the table to, you know, everything, all these different aspects of log keeping up. I didn't know how extensive that would be. Have you got to keep records of everything. And I thought, Oh, you just use organic ingredients, and you're fine. And you get the certification. There you go. But no, it's it's, it's really complex. And I actually really appreciated it. And I think, 8:19 yeah, I'm an advocate for more, 8:23 you know, more certifications, the better and more just kind of 8:28 ground rules for entering the space. Otherwise, it gets kind of a wild, wild west, everyone could do anything they want, and there's no regulations. And so I think it's really important. As the mushroom industry is booming here in the United States, we need more regulations to make sure that there's no 8:47 people doing sketchy things. 8:51 organic certification is that a it is a process and it's a very involved process. And what you nailed it when you said records are so important. They are you have to have the ability to trace back to its source everything. So tracking lot numbers from our suppliers of organic seeds respond production. We've never considered that decades ago. But now it's part of the normal mix. 9:19 I'll never forget way back when in the early 90s, one of our courts said Yeah, well here we get 9:26 certified organic based on our lifestyle. You know, if it seems to be cool in organic, then we're considered organic. I said, Well, looking back on that, wow. Things certainly have changed. Because we can't do that anymore. We have to have every i dotted every T crossed, but hey, it's a good thing. I think for a standpoint of mushroom cultivation, for selling a product to the consumer, or the grower. Knowing that the product is certified organic means that you've gone through 10:00 All the ones that jumped through hoops, but I just did. So we jumped through all the hoops to do it. And one of the interesting questions was at our last inspection is, why do you do this? Why are you certified organic? 10:15 The crux of the matter is, it's the right thing to do. We could certainly be a more profitable company, if we went to standard, non organic substrates. But we chose not to go that route. I think that if you want to really try to, 10:33 oh, make this world more sustainable, you have to start by looking at yourself and what your company does. And that's why we decided to go with organic because it's the right thing to do. 10:46 I agree. Yeah. And what I love about your company, as well as you guys helped me with my first shitai logs ever. I got spawned from you guys. And 10:59 a lot of Wildcat kits I've gotten over the years and you guys are big educators. And I saw that you did you got a SAR grant, which I have done a couple of SAR grants, I've been involved with them. And there are a lot of fun. And you guys did one with wind cap. 11:17 How did that research go? What were you guys researching? What were the results that you got from that? Well, I'll defer to the Grandmaster on that one. 11:29 I guess it makes me the grandmaster. 11:32 So wine cap has been such a popular mushroom for not only our company, but the industry. It's such a great introductory mushroom, super easy to grow in kind of over time, we've just noticed that soil underneath the wine cat bed and how quickly the wine cat breaks it down. It's just so enriching. And so back in 2014, we started really thinking, how can we actually quantify this change that we've seen over the years and years of doing this? 12:04 So we we started working with the first iteration and just kind of investigating 12:10 whether wind cap, you know, quickly breaking down that mulch material on top of soil can increase organic matter. Obviously, it improves soil tilth. It helps with, you know, water management. And how does that impact if you're, you know, co growing something like tomatoes or another vegetable crop. Obviously, one of the other benefits is that you can use the same small space to grow multiple crops. And especially with mushrooms, it's oftentimes an additional crop that farmers can really draw appeal to their standards. So 12:49 and kind of working with it over the years, we noticed how much healthier plants in plots with wind cap appeared to be. So much so that tomato plants were not only healthier, but they yielded more tomatoes in the first iteration of that study. And so from there, we also started asking, you know, what other benefits are there. And we hooked up with two researchers from the USDA and Penn State that have really helped us, you know, manage where this grant goes, the variables that we're interested in investigating, and really setting up something sound. This final iteration, and we're collecting the last of our data this fall year, really focused on the next level is ergothioneine, which is this new antioxidant amino acid it amino acid found to be so important for human health and found in our diet primarily through fungi and eating mushrooms. 13:50 Is that antioxidant transferred into plants? Or does the presence of the wind cat mushroom actually improve that? So that's been you know, this whole other level and layer two research project that we've been working on for years. So I would say we're just as excited with it, or even more. So. You know, each year we kind of continue this. Wait, just so I'm just so unclear. You're trying to figure out if ergothioneine gets transferred from the wind cap into plants. Yeah, exactly. And then what was the second part if it if it increases in the wind cap, if you do something. So the Ergo thymine is produced primarily by fungi? Yeah, in healthy soils, that's the soil micro organisms that are you know, allowing or creating this Ergo thymine then can be introduced to the human foods through the roots of plants and into our vegetables that we eat. And we find that healthy soils with healthy micro biomes you know, have healthier crops with more, more or ergothioneine 15:01 But you know, things like tillage and other conventional, you know, soil or land management practices can really impact that. And so what we're finding is, you know, if you supplement soil either with mushroom compost or grow in high organic matter soils with healthier soil micro organisms, you get healthier plants, and particular plants with higher original finding. The question is, is can we add a cultivar like wine cap, which is easy to grow, which has all sorts of other benefits. But can the wine cap itself produce this amino acid, which then can be, you know, taken up within the foodweb? You know, to vegetables or whatever we choose to grow? 15:47 Awesome. Yes, great. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. And I know, ergo, tiny is all the buzz in a lot of biohacking communities. And 15:58 I don't know why it's just have a has a spotlight on it right now. And that's super cool that you're researching it. And in such a time period of, you know, I feel like we're in a global food desert. And a lot of the food that we're producing is just so there, it's just not as nutrient dense as it was before. And so different agricultural practices that we can use to enrich our food back to kind of what it was in the past. 16:28 The more the merrier, you know, 16:31 and how we can enrich our soils because we're deteriorating our soil so quickly. So I think that's fantastic research. So kudos to you guys. That's, that's really awesome. Thanks. I'm curious. I've never visited your farm. I'm really hoping to one day, can you guys give kind of a virtual tour for for people, maybe they want to close their eyes, and you can take them through all the different sections of the farm. And what you guys are up to on a day to day basis? Yeah, well, that's easier said than done. Because we have two facilities, we have 17:05 our full farm unquote, which is where we do most of our research and development of for mushroom cultivation. And then we have a second facility where we produce our mushroom spawn that we sell to growers. 17:26 So 17:28 I can do the farm. If Lindsay if you want to do the spawn facility. 17:34 The farm does have a unique history in that it's been in 17:39 our my wife's family since 1917. 17:44 It was a dairy farm. And then when we moved here in 1985, I think it was we converted a port into a mushroom farm. So the farm consists of the 22 wooded acres on a 40 acre site. 18:04 If you come down our driveway, on the 18:08 left is our original facility that we set up for spa production. That facility is now used for research and development of our 18:20 various crops. That's where we do testing in in the facility for yields. Anytime we make a strain, or a strain or a recipe adjustment, all that work gets done there. 18:36 So we have 18:38 a climate controlled growing room, we have incubation space so that we have a uniform environment for all this stuff. It's also where we do our work on Shi taki on natural logs. So we have, of course a shaded environment where we're testing new strains where we take our old strains into all of our yield data on it. So we have a large soaking tank for that we also have a 19:11 greenhouse facility, which we rarely used for any log base cultivation but the greenhouse facility has really become a very important aspect of our company in that that's where we do 19:26 the work with almond Agaricus Whitecap to see what we can what kind of plant fungi interactions we can develop there. We also use it for growing Rishi. I don't know if you've seen any of our mushroom minutes but we'll take our spend reishi blocks us into wine beds and then get a third crap out of our reishi box before they finally reach the compost pile. So that's a rough tour of our farm facility. 19:59 It's also 20:00 where we live? It's, it's a very nice secluded spot. And the fringe benefit to that also is that 20:09 in some years, it's pretty good for wild mushroom hunting to 20:15 amazing. 20:17 Yeah, I wish I lived in a tropical Mushroom Kingdom. 20:24 Yeah, I bet you, you don't have any lacking of mushrooms on your on your kitchen table? Well, you know, we do eat mushrooms, not every day. But I would think more smarter than the average American consumer. We were very fortunate that we can walk across the yard to a walk in cooler for all sorts of mushroom varieties. So yeah, we incorporate them into our diet. And also, we use all that r&d work to help spread the Good News of fungi through recipe development. So we'd like to push consumer involvement in to buy in mushrooms, because cashier versatile, and they're so good for you. 21:09 Absolutely. So what about the lab side of things? What, what does that facility look like? Yeah, so it, it became apparent that we were growing out of our old facility, which we still use now for, you know, the growroom area. So, years back, you know, Joe and Mary Ellen started the planning process, which I'm sure was quite an endeavor of building a new building, acquiring the property, just a few miles down the road. So still, in past you go, which is nice and close to the now research facility. So you know, as you pull up to the new building, you walk through a pine stand, and into a building that has our office area, which really focuses on a lot of customer service, and you know, management area, and then really, the majority of the building is the production facility and shipping of our products, as well as storage. So with that, you know, you kind of enter into the back, which is the production area, where we have our mixers and our bagging machines and production equipment, basically to hydrate sterilize and prep materials. And then that material is pushed through our sterilizer or autoclave into a cleanroom area which includes the lab inoculation and incubation. So from start to finish, the the product kind of leaves the main production area into the clean area, and is produced and moved into incubation. And then the lab is adjacent to those clean areas where, you know, 22:55 masters are created cultures are maintained a lot of agar plate testing and that sort of thing happens in their 23:06 sweet, that's awesome for 23:11 for people that maybe don't want to create this whole extensive multi property, 23:17 mushroom company that they're maintaining master cultures, that whole thing, but they want to get into mushroom cultivation, and maybe they have a garden in their backyard, or you know, a set of woods or something. What would you say would be one or a couple species of mushrooms that they could begin their cultivation journey with and how would they grow them? 23:41 Good. Well go ahead. 23:44 What do you miss, which I don't think will be much. So I always like to ask, you know, where people are located and what sort of materials they have. Because with fungi, there's such a diversity of strains and species and ways to grow. So it can really depend on the type of grower but for the average person looking to get introduced to growing mushrooms wine cap is you know, one of the first go twos. Oftentimes people can easily access wood chips or straw or a combination. And they have a shaded area in their backlog that they can very quickly make a wine cat bed that can be you know, fast and productive and a great intro experience to mushroom growing. 24:28 You know, should hockey logs is a very dependable crop. It's a wonderful mushroom, you know, a good log can fruit for many years. So it's a very rewarding experience, but not everybody has access to fresh logs. So, if they do of course we would like to encourage log cultivation. And then lastly, you know, a new area of growth are you know, maybe urban growers or people in you know, temporary or you know areas without their own pride 25:00 operty and you know, that's where you can get into the entire world of indoor cultivation, whether that's oysters on straw, which is a really nice intro. Mushroom oysters are very aggressive. They're super adaptable. So you can grow them a lot of different materials that people have access to a lot of times, you know, waste products of other industry streams. So I would say probably those three. Would you agree, Joe? I agree. But I'd like to add a fourth and it's one that we've been working with for decades now. But I'm going to Garrick is is a great mushroom for the urban homestead because you can grow it in pots. You can grow it in pots with the herbs you can deposit your tomatoes and yeah you know you're not going to get rich growing all Medicare's caregiver. Garrick is in pots. But boy what an What a neat thing to see popping up out of a pot is a nice little crop of Vamana Garrick is that you can pick fresh and press your friends cook with it and do whatever so that's I think the fourth one that we would really recommend to people 26:09 that's interesting. I would I would have you know, agree with the top three I've never grown on Agaricus and that is on my bucket list to grow. I'll have to I'll have to make a bunch of pots and Chrome in there. I might have to get a kit off your site with with these four mushrooms what would you say are your favorite recipes to cook them up? 26:34 Oh, I you know, I I cut my teeth on she talking cultivation. And it's still my favorite mushroom. And it's one that I will always push because of its cooking. It's cooking qualities. It's got a great texture, it's got a great taste, you can put it in just about any dish without it losing those characteristics. 26:59 So we could say it's a hard mushroom to kill when it comes to cooking. Because it is diverse and it is 27:07 such you know it's such a great addition texture wise and tastes when it says so one that we always try to use or to get people excited about cooking with mushrooms. 27:19 I would say a second to that. 27:22 The wine cat mushroom when it's picked during the button farm is very appealing because it looks familiar to people maybe new to eating mushrooms. You know at the farmers market you can have a spread of shittaka and oyster which are usually recognized because those are kind of exposed to growers or consumers in grocery stores. But when it comes to something like Lion's Mane, you know that's a little out there in terms of approachability. But when you see a little button of a wine cat mushroom, it looks similar enough to the white buttons that people are familiar with, you know fairly mild flavor you can cook it very similar to anything you do with a button mushrooms I'd say that's not a winner for flavor necessarily like the shitai will always come out on top when you're talking about culinary flavor. But wine cap is very approachable for a new person. 28:17 I agree. I think the best dish I've ever had with wine cap was I was over I had an old professor Her name was Sarah Berquist and she made the best wine cap dish I've ever seen. I think it's called What is it eggplant Capri salad which is eggplant 28:37 to tomato, mozzarella and basil. And then she did kind of a duo where she added in just the cap of wine cap in the layers. So you know or replacing eggplant with the wine cap cap. And it was so good. You know, with drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette and just kind of merit glazed, you know, in the oven. Super delicious, super good. I think wine cap is my favorite. One of my favorite mushrooms to grow. Because it's so easy. You know, I did a lot of guerrilla growing with that mushroom. One summer I just, you know collected big tubs of woodchips inoculated with it. And I found you know, there's a lot of areas that are looking to re mulch paths for you know, walking paths. And before they re mulch it, they'll just dump the woodchips into a big pile. What you could do is you can find those big piles and just you know, throw some inoculant in there. And they'll they'll spread it far and wide. And so I would I would do is I would drive around and try to find these big piles of wood chips that they just dumped. And then I would come back the next year and there would be wine caps everywhere, you know, hundreds and hundreds of wine caps and I would 30:00 have all these, you know, and they would do the work for me, all you have to do is put them in the big wood chip pile. And they they're one of the most aggressive mushroom species that I know. I mean, they're, they take off and and all you need, you don't need any sterile techniques, they actually don't even like sterile techniques, they fight against it. So yeah, that's, that's a big, big one for me. 30:24 I saw an article on your website about my Toki and chicken to the woods log cultivation. 30:31 Now, back in the day, I haven't grown on logs and many years. But back when I was growing on logs, that was kind of unheard of. 30:41 Maybe in my circle, but has it come further in the past? You know, five years or so? Have you guys cracked the code? Is there a trick to growing them? Or is it still incredibly difficult? Well, yes and no. Well, to give you a short history on now, we learned that technique when we were in Japan in 2010. 31:03 It was my Taki, drone unlocks, we saw them through the procedure. And then we said, well, we got to try that at home. Well, it took a while to figure it all out. It's rather daunting for people that have to sterilize wood pieces. So we've worked on alternatives to that with I do believe of boiling and steaming. 31:24 And have we cracked the code? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. But we do know it works. 31:31 We plant we inoculate implant my tacky logs every year. And we put them out. And it's one of those things where you really can't be a type A personality, looking for results right now. You know, it just doesn't happen. It's a slow growing organism. So you may be investing in two years, sometimes three years before things begin to fruit. But boy, once they begin to fruit, they become very reliable. Once those dogs get older to skip a year, but boy, they last and they they do produce quite well. chicken of the woods. Yeah, we've grown that we've had fruit on Long's outside, is it as reliable as my tacky? Probably not. We're still working to refine that. But we do have results with it. And of course, we encourage people try a lot of different things so that we can add to that knowledge base so that when Alex asks, What do I do to draw sulfur shop will have a much better understanding of it and be able to throw more ideas. And 32:38 so you're talking about sterilizing part of the process of for my talk, usually with log cultivation, you have a fresh log hardwood, usually and drill holes, but the spawning covered with wax. What What differs with my Taki? 32:55 Oh, I'm gonna say it's the how aggressive it is at colonizing wood. 33:01 We did, I can't tell you countless drill and Phil 33:06 Knight affiliations with both my taki 33:09 and chicken of the woods. And I can count those successes on one hand, we did have a drill and fill log down with my taki probably a decade ago that fruited one mushroom. So it seems that you had to give the competitive edge to my Taki. And the only way you're going to get that to happen is through pretreatment of wood. In like I said, there could be via sterilization, the boiling or steaming. So one of those three methods will give you will give my taki that edge to be able to take over that one before anything else does. 33:53 Cool. Yeah, that I think that's the trick. It's so weird to me. And I've heard this so often. 34:01 That when people especially if they come from like a plant cultivation background, and they get into mushroom cultivation, they're they're weirded out of how sterile a lot of the techniques are in there, like, why can't I just sprinkle the spores on it? You know, it's like, that's what happens in the woods. You know, like, why 34:21 they seem so sensitive, you know, it's like, oh, I got to pretreat the wood, I got to sterilize it. So it has a competitive advantage. But out in the woods, you can find these 50 pound my talkies and they're just, you know, they're all over the place. Why, you know, when we try to do it, we have to, you know, do all these extra steps and it it's always, you know, baffled me, which is why I like wine cap is like I feel like that's one of the only mushrooms that you can just throw around and it takes off you know, what are your thoughts on that as you know, a lab manager and deep into the petri plate cultivation of of sterile 35:00 versus dirty technique. Yeah. So, you know, that's thankfully we do have a lot of fungi to work with. And some like wine cap and even oyster are aggressive enough to overcome a lot of those risk factors with contamination. But you know, when you're talking working in the lab and expanding on sterile substrate, you no longer have the balance and the checks and balances in nature that are present keeping everything kind of in control. When you sterilize the substrate, there is nothing else. And so it is a free for all for literally any organism that gets there first. And so your job is to make sure that the only organism that touches that substrate, such as an agar plate, or a sterile block, is the mushroom that you're looking to grow. And that's why you have to be so cautious is because it turns out there are you know, fungi and spores and bacteria literally everywhere, all over our own bodies and surfaces and then the air. So when you're trying to control and you know, work with sterile media, you need to really make sure that you're avoiding the risk factors associated with those contaminants, because they are also really aggressive and grow really quickly and can be super problematic. You know, when it comes to cultivation indoors and in sterile things, you really want to make sure that you have something aggressive and pure culture. It turns out, nature does a really great job of managing all sorts of things. So when you're growing outdoors, you just don't have to be as cautious. 36:34 What other interesting mushrooms are you in r&d with? You know, do you have any mushrooms that you haven't cracked the code yet that you're working on? That you're just crossing your fingers that you're gonna get the first fruit? Or that you've gotten a couple of fruits and you're, you know, wanting to nail down a technique on? 36:55 Yes, we certainly are always looking forward to the next greatest thing. And you know, 37:03 we'll often learn about mushroom cultivation through travel. And it's always really interesting to see what the Chinese are up to because boy, they do a lot of a lot of exotic mushroom cultivation and they're always the one it seems to be setting the bar. The question always becomes can we transfer their techniques over to what we do here in the States? So we are working on 37:29 some rather bizarre fungi that the American Sumur may or may not accept, but we want to try to grow them 37:37 the My favorite one is the pig stomach mushroom, as it's known in China, and it's a 37:45 Lindsey helped me here because I tend to forget genus and species 37:49 for the pig stomach mushroom task to be maximum Yeah, Clay tastic. It's so we're we've been trying to work with that one. We like it because it's it's something that likes heat. Now, granted, we don't get much heat up here in the summer. So we're trying to get that one to grow as an offering for people to grow during the summer months, along with 38:11 one that we just fruited. And that was the mochi mushroom. Nice. Yeah. So that one, another warm weather one that we're really trying to get the cultivation nailed down on so that we can offer it to our customers. But more importantly, you know, we'd like to offer to our customers but we also want to be able to find support on cultivation. You know, these are the proofs Vegas spawn and saw it but you know, questions are asked you better have the answers or at least an inkling as to what the answer should be. So those are the two right now. 38:47 We also, you know, reluctantly have jumped on the morale bandwagon. 38:56 We indoor outdoor, outdoor, nice outdoor, yeah. Lindsey did the research on it. And we just got planting Morel beds two or three weeks ago. 39:09 So we'll see what happens with that. 39:12 Yeah, fingers crossed. Yeah, I it is not seeing huge morale farms in China. I mean, it's like, as far as the eye can see just beds and beds and morels, and different you know, different species different grades. 39:29 But, yeah, I 39:31 feels like they crack the code for sure. And then, you know, you definitely start to see some indoor cultivation popping up around the world, which is fun to see morels are great but the catastrophe Maximos the first time I've heard of that species, the giant catastrophe or the what is it pig stomach? 39:52 The trade name in China. It's actually golf. I'm sure it's got some beautiful 40:00 Blue color and Gil's nice brown stem. And it's interesting to see then China's marketed to restaurants, just the cap, the stem then is sold elsewhere. And I never really got an answer where who's buying the stamps? But yeah, it's it's another thing to add, you know, if you're a foreign market grower, when it'd be nice to have that in your arsenal, you know, you certainly would want to try to change the name. I don't know how well that would go over the US consumer, but I'm sure we could come up with something. Yeah, I'm reading an article right now. It's also called the bamboo shoot mushroom. It seems like the really long stems that I kind of look like a bamboo shoot. Yeah. And I think that that that'll go over a lot better than pig stomach. 40:46 For sure. Unless people like it, then you know, all for you. But yeah, that's a cool mushroom. I'll have to do more research on so that. 40:55 Also called Big Cup umbrella. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Amazing. That's super cool. 41:04 What? What, what do you feel like are some myths or misconceptions that you maybe get? You know, you've been in business for 3940 years? So 41:16 I'm sure you have it a lot of 41:19 myco phobic people are just unaware, people asking the same 41:25 questions over and over again. And what are some that you want to clear the air about? 41:33 Oh, boy, the, I think the question that always drives me 41:41 to the brink of insanity is that 41:43 I'm growing these mushrooms, can I eat them? 41:47 It's like, well, yeah, we do like sowing spawn to people to grow a mushroom that they can eat. Because if that wasn't the way we'd have, you know, our customer face has really declined. So we do get that question to be surprised. And how often would get that, that seems to be changing. Now people are more aware, there's more stuff online. So 42:11 the 42:13 other question that we get, that I find hard to answer is, 42:21 is this an easy mushroom withdrawal? 42:24 Because that really is based upon 42:27 your background, your experience and your access to resources. So we can say, Hey, why cats easiest mushroom or the grow. But yet, we'll have people planted in a cornfield, or we'll have people planted and we're really isn't going to really get into wells, or they have the wrong substrate. So the those are the two questions that I've heard over and over the years. And I don't know, I'm sure Lindsay is on phone details. So she probably has some other ones I wouldn't throw in there. Yeah, I would like to add a third one, I think, you know, people new to mushroom cultivation, who enjoy the outdoors, I've seen mushrooms growing on all sorts of rotting logs in wood. And so a really common one is so I go out in the woods, and I found a rotting log. And that's what I use to grow my photography. And so a big part of our education process is talking about selecting a good quality log to get the best experience. And just you know, of course, there are a ton of fungi out there decaying really old and Mossy logs laying on the forest floor for years. But in in order to get the best shitai experience, we're talking about a much different quality of log, you know, selecting specific tree species types that are most ideal, you know, cutting at the appropriate time inoculating within a certain window. So, there's a big education, focus there and making sure that people are set up for success, you know, not making assumptions just based on observation, which, you know, all of us do. Oh, man, I I'm sure you've gotten an email at least once from someone that he's like, oh, so I bought a bunch of spawn and I inoculated like 40 old rotten mossy logs I found and I waited a year and I'm not seeing any mushrooms like, like, oh, no, 44:20 because it takes so long. I mean, it is a lot of effort to make mushroom logs, but once it's only it's like one and done you know 44:29 maybe if you want to force soak it maybe it's a little more effort like once or twice a year or something like that, but then you have mushrooms for years years and it's you know, you just got to put in the first initial effort and then then you have mushrooms popping every year without without effort for a really long time. 44:49 Catheter that's that's really funny. So 44:53 kind of a similar question, but 44:56 say that you could teleport back to 45:00 1983 With all the knowledge that you have now on on running this business for the last 40 years. 45:08 What if you could start over from scratch with all the knowledge that you have now? What are what are some things that you would do differently? And what are some things that you just double down on? 45:21 Why I tell you what so much has changed in 40 years? 45:28 Well, first of all, I wish I knew how to groom grow mushrooms back in 1980. 45:33 Bear in mind in 1983, what did we have? We had a gear kiss. And there was some inklings of serratus cultivation coming up, and she talked, he was brand new. 45:47 So, you know, we were at the forefront. And I guess our knowledge base was limited to what we could glean from 46:00 the Japanese because they were the ones cultivating deck and natural logs. So that meant, you know, going down to the local library and getting trade publications and trying to figure out which articles to translate or get translated. We base a lot of our stuff on abstracts, because you know, who could afford translations of scientific articles back then? So, I don't know if I was to do it over again, it's, that's just a hard question to answer. It's, you know, we live in totally different times. Now, there's so much information available, that it is 46:36 really overwhelming. And you know, you go on the internet, if it's on the internet, it's got to be true, right. So there's a lot of information, some of it good, some of it bad. So I guess if I had to start over, I would, I would probably stick to what we did. And that was consult the experts, we were fortunate in that we had good connections at Forest Products lab in Madison. So we were able to talk to Gary Latham, he was the guy that started to Toki are promoted, she tagged cultivation in us on a large scale. So we were able to tap into that information. 47:11 You know, we knew the mycology set of forest products lab, we had worked with him. So, you know, looking back on it, it's like, do some things that 47:23 are kind of boneheaded. But you also look back and say, Well, this is what we did, right. And this is what I keep on doing that is talking to people that know the subject. And I tell you what, 47:36 we found back in the 90s, that there was a lot of resistance to people sharing information. But for the most part, that information is out there, and you just have to find it. And you know what? Someone once told us, oh, you're in that business, there are no trade secrets. That's all available information. So that really opened up a new window to us in that we're willing to share information. You know, that's what it's about. It's about growing in industry. It's about you know, getting more people to consume mushrooms, more people that grow mushrooms. So don't be afraid to ask questions. The worst question in the world is the one that goes on asked. So you know, I think that looking back on it, 48:21 where we do things differently? 48:23 No, probably not. You know, it's just that it's such a long history here, that we did what we thought was right, and that's where it got us to today. 48:35 Great answer. What about you? Would you do anything differently? 48:40 Um, I don't think so. I think when I started here, it was just a whole world of cultivation was opened up to me, and I just did my best to read and watch and listen to everything I could to just immerse myself. And so that's what we're doing. I think we probably are distracted by a million really neat things in the industry. As always, 49:05 I think we want to be a part of everything. As you can see, we dabble in a lot of, you know, side projects and distractions. And so it's a constant reminder to stick with the the fundamentals of what we do as a company. But yeah, we want to be a part of all of it, we want to keep learning and that's what's neat about the industry is that's exactly what you know, mushroom cultivation and applications are all about. So I think, you know, looking back, just a gentle reminder that you can't do it all. So pick, pick a few good things to be really good at. 49:41 Yeah, one of the actually one of the questions that I wanted to ask was, if you had any advice to you know, 49:47 people getting into mycology, whether it's a hobby or business and I think you you to answer that, 49:54 in your response of, of, you know, consult your experts stick with with things that you really 50:00 Get out and you know, stay in your lane basically is, you know, and and double down on the things that you're really good at, you know. And I think that, that's really good advice for pretty much any field is, if you want to learn something, consult the experts and stick with what you're good at. I think that is amazing advice for for literally anyone for anything. 50:27 You know, I think you got you, you nailed that answer you summed it up so well. The only the only other thing that I might add to that is that, 50:36 you know, start small, we have too many people that want to start off in the business by doing you know, 10,000 locks. And it's like, well, that's great. We'd love your business, but what are you gonna do have you with, with the rear production? Have you considered marketing? You know, what's, what is this all about? And the thing is, is that you got to start small, you have to develop your growing techniques, so that you're reliable, if you're going into a marketplace that is, you know, if you throw all caution to the wind, because that's your hobby, fine, go for it. But boy, if you're looking for a return on investment, you got to get that all figured out at a time. So starting small and seeing where it goes from there is the best way to do it. 51:16 Yeah, and also, I see this happen all the time with people, they love mushrooms, and then they decide to start their own mushroom business. And like, three years later, five years later, they're like, I am not doing any mushrooms. 51:34 And all I'm doing is accounting and managing people. And I'm doing payroll, and I'm doing all this stuff. And like here, I was thinking that, Oh yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start a mushroom business. So I can do mushrooms 24/7. And then they they get into it. And it's like, oh, it's a business, you know, I am literally not doing any mushrooms. And here, I am actually running a business. And so that's something I tell people a lot as well of like, 52:00 yeah, you know, consider Do you want this as a hobby? Or do you want this as a business? And it's really hard to do both and keep it alive for a really long time. I mean, any business anything to, to make it last for 40 years, that's a huge accomplishment. You know, not many businesses make it. So that's huge, you know, and then to do it around something that you love. Another huge accomplishment. So yeah, congratulations, you guys. It's really amazing. 52:29 What, what is on the future horizons? What? 52:33 Where, where do you guys see yourself in 510 years? 52:38 Well, you know, that's that vision question that we get asked more and more frequently, I think we what we want to do is certainly stick to what we've always done best. And that is spark production, and education. I think that what we need to do is continue to develop new species that people can grow either as a hobby or commercially. And we need to continue to do our research and development on things that are of practical use to growers. 53:19 I see 53:22 more than way of breeding, we've started some breeding trials. So that, you know, maybe we can come up something with something locally. 53:33 That will, you know, be a 53:37 good tool for other growers to use. So that's the vision I see I see there's a lot of distractions, or we could go off on so many tangents. So it's hard to keep it real into staying focused on what we do and how we can improvement in what we can continue to offer, as to growers as a means of our company growing itself. So that's where that's what I see. But you know, I've been doing this for a long time. So I'd like a younger person's perspective. 54:11 Where do you where do you see? 54:13 Yeah, I think I think we've seen the industry just blossom in the last few years. And obviously, there's been a steady consistent, even sometimes exponential growth in interest of mushrooms, but in the last few years, it's really, really amped up. And now we're entering the era where people are looking to actually experiment themselves. You know, a lot of times people are introduced to mushroom cultivation, maybe with a tabletop farm or a grow kit that they grow on their kitchen table. And that's a neat experience. And then you know, the next step may be cultivation. But now we're seeing people really want to experiment and dabble with, you know, other stuff. 55:00 substrates or interesting methods of cultivation. And so there's a lot of, you know, more application instead of just mushroom growing as a business. And so that whole experimental realm and movement is really fascinating to try to, 55:16 you know, adjust and still be helpful. And so providing spawning materials for people to do some of their own research and work, I think is something that we're gonna have to adapt to, and meeting the needs of this, you know, somewhat new and different consumer now. 55:35 Where can people follow your work? You have a website, I'm sure you're on social media, any other exciting projects that you guys are working on that you want to shout out? Where can people tune in and follow your work? Yeah, so our website, field forest dotnet, is a really great resource for you know, new and experienced growers. We have a lot of instructional material and content on there. And it's also a platform to kind of promote our citizen science program that we started in the last year, where, you know, acknowledging people have access to different materials and testing, you know, various fungi and other manners than we're capable of doing, because there's so many things going on right now. So we provide guidance and materials for people and citizens to do their own research and work. So I think that's a really fun new thing. We promote a lot of what we do and cultivation strategies and different things through our social media, which includes Facebook, Instagram, and even Tik Tok. So you can check us out there. 56:46 I think one of the one thing that we really like to bring people aware of is, you know, there's a lot going on in the world of mushrooms. And there's 56:58 how can I say this, there's a way of bringing information to people now via social media that I've never imagined. 57:07 I'm an old guy, social media is something that's new and exciting for me, even though it's probably all had for people of different generation. So what I'm trying to say is that, like, we use Instagram, for our mushroom moon, and the mushroom minute is a minute of what is going on in the world of mushroom mushroom cultivation. So I like that I also like our YouTube channel, because there's a lot of great videos that we've been able to post on cultivation. So being a trago data I am I'm finally catching up with this stuff. And I can see where it's really worthwhile. 57:41 But I will say off a Twitter. 57:44 Same Yeah. 57:46 And I highly recommend these guys field them for us. I've been using them for almost a decade. And you know, I recommend you guys all the time for people wanting to get into law cultivation, or any outdoor growing. And they want to get resources, information, spawn kits, whatever, I shout you guys out all the time, because 58:07 you're one of the best out there and you have a wealth of information. And just make it really easy for people just be getting into mushroom cultivation of how to get started, you know, and how to get your hands dirty, and grow your own mushrooms, which I think is rewarding for anyone growing their own food, but also tapping into the fungal kingdom. 58:28 Thanks, we appreciate that. Yeah, thank you for all that you're doing and what you've been doing for the last 40 years. I appreciate it. And I'm sure there's tons of people out there that also appreciate it just as much as me. 58:41 And thank you everyone for tuning in and tuning in for another episode of the mushroom revival podcasts. We couldn't do it without you, our amazing listeners from all around the world. 58:52 For people that are new to the show, we don't take any donations this show is completely, you know, free. It's a passion project. And if if you want to support the show, you can head over to our site at mushroom revival.com We have a whole list of functional mushroom products from gummies, to tinctures, capsules, etc. And a bunch of free ebooks that you can download. 59:15 And yeah, we're also doing that giveaway that I was telling you about in the beginning. So we have a link in the description that you can enter to win some free goodies. And other than that, yeah, spread the word. Tell people about mushrooms about field and forest about growing mushrooms outdoors. Get curious, ask a bunch of questions and tell your friends tell your neighbor about how awesome mushrooms are. So help hope everyone tuning in from wherever you are around the world has Have a blessed day. Much love and may the Force be with you. 59:51 Thanks. Thanks Alex. 1:00:00 People Transcribed by https://otter.ai
