I’m going to go ahead and bet that you didn’t know that there is a mushroom farm in Palisade, CO. And no, we’re not talking about magic mushrooms, though as you’ll find out, there’s something magical about every single mushroom, including the kind you serve on your dinner plate. Tune in to learn all about the fascinating world of mushrooms and what they can do for you and the agricultural community of the Grand Valley.
For more about Monumental Mushrooms, visit: monumentalmushrooms.com
Theme Music: Riverbend by Geoff Roper
Photo courtesy of Rhysa Ferris
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Welcome to the Postcards From Palisade podcast. I’m your host, Lisa McNamara. Palisade is most famous for its peaches, but there’s so much more happening in our little town. Join me as I interview business owners, scientists, winemakers, historians, artists, and community members to hear about how they are making Palisade a great place to live and visit.
Today, we’re continuing our science streak with Rhysa Ferris, Mad Scientist at Monumental Mushrooms here in Palisade. I’m going to go ahead and bet that you didn’t know that there is a mushroom farm in Palisade. And no, we’re not talking about magic mushrooms, though as you’ll soon find out, there’s something magical about every single mushroom, including the kind you serve on your dinner plate.
Tune in to learn all about the fascinating world of mushrooms and what they can do for you and the agricultural community of the Grand Valley on today’s Postcard From Palisade.
Rhysa: My name is Rhysa Ferris, and I’m the mad scientist at Monumental Mushrooms down the street. I’m working for Marc Hebert, and we have intentions of doing really big business in the mycological field here in the Grand Valley.
Lisa: That’s amazing. So how did Monumental Mushrooms come to be?
Rhysa: Mark and his lovely bride Marie moved here from New Hampshire roughly a year ago and wanted to start up a new business. They thought maybe mushrooms would suit them. Not knowing where to start, they came and took some classes from me at CMU and then asked if I wouldn’t help them a little further. And I ended up working for them full time.
Lisa: So do you still teach at CMU?
Rhysa: I do. I have classes coming up here in March and April. I teach just culinary mushroom cultivation, some indoor and some outdoor classes.
Lisa: And anybody can take those classes? You don’t have to be a student and enrolled?
Rhysa: You can. You don’t have to be enrolled. It’s a community class at the WCCC. And I’m also going to kind of, like, guest teach with Chef Wayne in his sustainable cuisine classes there at CMU, which I’m really excited about. That’s coming up pretty soon.
Lisa: Very cool. How long have you been teaching?
Rhysa: Few years since I want to say Covid.
Lisa: So what’s your professional background? Like? How did you get into mushrooms? And why mushrooms or fungi? Oh, do you like to call it mushrooms or fungi?
Rhysa: Either.
Lisa: Okay. Either.
Rhysa: No preference.
Lisa: Okay.
Rhysa: I, took an interest in them very young. I got my first apartment when I was about 16, and I didn’t enjoy having roommates. I’d had a couple places before that with lots of kids my age, and I detested roommates. Sorry, guys. I know you’re out there, but you were awful. And so I decided to turn my second bedroom into a lab. And I got a lot of petri dishes and some pressure cookers, and I built a ramshackle lab in that second bedroom. I bought a couple of textbooks, and off I went. And I used to pit relatively dangerous microorganisms against one another in petri dishes. And watch the battle that would ensue.
Lisa: That’s amazing.
Rhysa: And I never really stopped being fascinated by that world, that very quiet world of minutia and they play such an important role in what happens on our planet. And until recently, were so often overlooked. So I, would say within the last 15 years, my dabbling in mycology has been gaining speed. After my children got old enough to kind of see to themselves, I began plans to build an underground lab in my backyard. And I designed it, commissioned friends to help build it, help pour the concrete, the whole thing. And I’ve just never slowed down since then.
Lisa: Going back to your petri dishes and your microorganism battles, what was something that turned out maybe differently than you thought it was going to, or what kind of things would you see, happen that you’re just like, wow, I can’t. Like, I’m, hooked.
Rhysa: I was often surprised by the immune reactions that different organisms would have with one another. It’s like a kaleidoscope of color and texture. But the most unexpected thing, I think, that happened in that lab was the time a chipmunk got loose in my apartment. Little baby chipmunk got into the lab and managed somehow to open a couple of my good petri dishes. And I could clearly see its little hand prints in the mycelium. I closed them up, taped them off just to see what would happen. And some very unusual tie dye, like bacteria and fungi, presented afterward
Lisa: wild.
Rhysa: Never could identify it. I always had a slew of textbooks at my disposal with troubleshooting guides. And if it’s blue, it could be such and such. If it’s blue and hairy, it could be such and such. And I remember poring through those texts and trying to understand what I had. And I’d like to take this opportunity to mention that that is a terrible idea for health purposes. I do not recommend that anyone does that in their apartment. And I knew it wasn’t safe at the time, but I’m a bit of a risk taker. When in doubt, throw it out.
Lisa: That’s good. That’s good advice. When I told people I was going to be talking to you today and what you do and what monumental mushrooms here in Palisade, the first question everybody asked me was, oh, are they growing, magic mushrooms? based on your website, One of your FAQs, one of your three is the same thing. So I’m guessing people also ask you that all the time.
Rhysa: It’s a common question because it’s such a topic of interest right now. there have been some relaxed laws, and a lot of folks are going that direction, it isn’t where we’re going to end up as a business because I believe that the market will flood with psychoactive mushrooms if it hasn’t already. And believe me folks, it won’t be the growers who make the money.
Lisa: that totally makes sense. similarly, I think as a food, people have a really strong reaction to them. Like they have a gut reaction. It’s they love them or they’re like eww. So a few people are really neutral, on mushrooms. Like I don’t feel like it’s very rare to have somebody just be like, eh, I’ll take it or leave it.
Rhysa: I am actually one of those people
Lisa: really?
Rhysa: I am one of those take it or leave it type people. My interest in them was more from the perspective of a scientific mind than as a foodie.
Lisa: Oh, interesting. That I was not expecting.
Rhysa: I like them just fine.
Rhysa: Though I would be comfortable stating that after picking several thousand pounds of culinary mushrooms, one does tire of mushrooms.
Lisa: Yeah, I can see that.
Rhysa: But I never tire of growing them. I am never exhausted in my curiosity of what may happen next. So today I’ve brought you a box of mushrooms and there are two species in here that are new to me that I have not become proficient with. And each one has a very different pattern of growth, preferences, colors, fragrance signature, signs of health and illness. And it’s that quiet communication and understanding that is where my fascination lies. I would be just as happy growing mycorrhizals say, mushrooms that pair with and seem to communicate with plants. They use chelating acids and enzymes at the tips of of the mycelial tubes to pierce root systems. And through that connection there’s an exchange of nutrition, sugars, moisture. And I’m deeply fascinated by this process. And I think it is tremendously valuable for potential organic farmers to incorporate local mycorrhizals in the rehabilitation of the soil in which they intend to grow here.
Lisa: Interesting
Rhysa: because mycorrhizal mushrooms, along with other organisms, are largely responsible for the breakdown of all the leaves and twigs and last year s crop, the compost that you throw out. And if there is a deficit of these organisms, you are reliant on fertilizers. I can’t help but wonder if total rehabilitation of the soil here after many, many decades of heavy fertilizing wouldn’t be more plausible with the addition native mycorrhizals.
Lisa: That’s really interesting. So the last episode I talked to a gentleman named Fred Judson who worked his entire career at the CSU extension in Fruita on like a bean, breeding program with the whole purpose of breeding beans, for one of the reasons around here, to help with refreshing the nutrients in the soil and creating a type of bean variety that was disease resistant. And so you hear a lot about things like that being used to rotate through fields. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody say anything about using mushrooms, or fungi or rhizomes. And that’s a really fascinating idea.
Rhysa: The soil here is fungal deficient for many reasons. The climate’s not especially conducive to its growth, but also because it’s incredibly sensitive to fertilizers and pesticides. Mycelium in its way is relatively delicate and these types of additives burn it to death. And it takes some time, can take some time to come back. The desert is the slowest ecosystem to recover when it’s been disrupted. Sadly, we might not have any grasp over what was here before we started laying down the chemicals we needed to boost crop production, to make profit feasible in farming. So the gentleman Fred that you spoke with, I assume he was experimenting with bean crops because they can refresh the nitrogen content in soil. And that’s classic crop rotation. Something like corn, say, has a very high nitrogen requirement. And if you repeatedly grow corn year after year, it will remove all traces of it from the ground and become sickly, I think pretty fast. So folks used to rotate crops and then they would allow a year where the ground was fallow, meaning that nothing was grown the soil was permitted to rest. Now I wonder if that time that the soil was traditionally allowed to lay fallow wasn’t to allow the microorganisms that I’m talking about to recover. They also don’t suffer tilling well. when you drag and implement through and pull them all up to the surface, you break all those delicate tubes, the thousands and thousands of miles of interconnected digestive tract that they are, and they dry out. They are harmed by that process.
Lisa: Right. And to your point of never knowing what was here. I mean, they started in, they, the first farmers who came here in like the late 1800s. I mean, they just started growing peaches and absolutely blasting them with arsenic and, you know, the worst possible things that you could think of to put on the ground and did that for years and years and years before they realized that was really bad. it’s kind of fascinating to think that, yeah, you might not ever know it was actually here before.
Rhysa: we often don’t know the harm that we do.
Lisa: That’s it. Yes.
Rhysa: It’s something you can count on from people. We won’t figure it out right away.
Lisa: Yeah. Getting back to growing mushrooms though, inside indoors, is it difficult to do?
Rhysa: On what scale? On a small scale?
Lisa: On the scale you’re trying to do.
Rhysa: Yes, on the scale that I’m reaching for, it is very difficult. And I suppose that you need quite a lot of drive to want to bother to figure it out. I suppose the most difficult part so far is trying to navigate the number of tasks that must be accomplished in a day in order for the quality to meet my standards. It’s quite a lot of space to clean, for instance. I’m not partial to chemical fogging of any kind and I prefer to be very proactive in my approach rather than applying chemicals to combat a contaminant, I would prefer to clean very well to begin with, but that takes a lot of time. It’s so many, hand done tasks in a day. 500 pounds a week is really reaching for the stars in my case.
Lisa: that’s a lot.
Rhysa: It is.
Lisa: So, why is the cleaning part so important? Like what could go wrong if you didn’t make sure that everything was clean to the standards that you need it to be clean to?
Rhysa: Everything can go wrong. So the mushrooms that I grow do not enjoy she sharing their food source with other organisms. They’re primary saprophytes. They want to be the only microorganism in that sawdust in this case. And if you have another aggressive fungi that enters the scene, they fight with it. Rather than producing beautiful fruit bodies. They will exhaust their immune system trying to eradicate something that is in the substrate. There are many molds that you have to contend with. The grow environment is roughly 85% humidity and it just lends itself to pernicious little microorganisms that will crop up. If you’re not diligent about cleaning every surface, removing every block with a weakened immune system or that shows signs of ailing, they have to go out right away.
Lisa: Interesting.
Rhysa: I suppose that there are easier ways to grow. I of course, have selected a difficult way with very high standards. No regrets.
Lisa: Yeah, I’m sure people can taste it. I can’t wait to try them.
Rhysa: if you keep it clean, the flavor is so much better. And mushrooms have this incredible superpower. They disassemble cells. They use those same chelating enzymes and acids that I mentioned a few minutes ago in discussing mycorrhizals to rip cells asunder. Now they can do that to chemicals as well, thereby I suppose, making those chemicals or heavy metals soluble to you. So they will take these things apart, absorb them, and they will be all throughout the fruit body which you then intend to eat. So if you can keep it very clean in the first place, and I just use simple things like castile soap, quite a lot of water, a lot of vacuuming and sweeping and just generally keeping all of the debris cleaned up all the time. And that’s enough. I don’t want any potential hyper-accumulation of heavy metals or toxic substances in those mushrooms. So I’m really persnickety about what they eat and how clean their environment is from beginning to end.
Lisa: Interesting. What do they eat?
Rhysa: They eat cellulose and lignin. so trees. Straw.
Lisa: So they’re eating the sawdust?
Rhysa: the sawdust.
Lisa: Interesting.
Rhysa: We’re lucky enough to have a warehouse sharing a parking lot with Lincoln Woodworks and all of the sawdust that they would have thrown away, that meets my criteria. It has to be certain species of trees, cannot contain OSB, treated lumber, things like that. They collect all of that for me, hundreds of bags of sawdust and they bring it over very kindly. I then wet it, weigh it, sterilize it, and more or less infect it with the organism of my choice. But that organism must be the only thing growing in that sawdust. And once I detect a second organism, out it goes. Out for compost.
Lisa: So that’s fascinating that you use the byproduct of Lincoln Woodworks. was it always your intention to do that or was it just a happy accident that they were next door?
Rhysa: I have always sought to use waste products from other businesses in what I do. I also use sawdust from Fruita Wood and Barbecue Supply. I don’t know if you know Bert and Chris, but they’re pretty awesome. So I’ve actually worked with them for maybe eight years. They make all the smoking chips for the barbecue joints around town. So they have the good stuff, oak, alder, maple. And they are also kind enough to bag that up, and I bring it back to the warehouse. So it’s not just Lincoln Woodworks. It’s also Bourget. Mike Bourget down the street, the millworker. When he has, when he’s been making blanks or whatever he’s up to in there that meet my specifications, I’ll jump into the back of that trailer he has and scoop everything up and take it back to the warehouse. I prefer this to ordering hardwood pellets, which, you know, a lot of resources go into making hardwood pellets. This is all stuff that would just be going to the landfill.
Lisa: Yeah. That’s so cool. I think that’s one of the coolest things. And I know that one thing that people were, you know, maybe, a concern about a mushroom farm is like, oh, it has to be, you know, it’s manure and everything. And there’s none. There’s none of that whatsoever here. Right?
Rhysa: Not required.
Lisa: Just sawdust.
Rhysa: Not required. From primary saprophytes. And then I will use soybean hulls for some of my species to boost the nitrogen a little bit, but it’s a very small amount.
Lisa: So you’re growing, I think, five different species right now. Is that, about where you want to stay?
Rhysa: It might actually be more at the moment. Yeah. I’m a little over the top.
Lisa: So what kind of things are you growing? Maybe I should say, what’s your favorite and least favorite that you’re growing right now?
Rhysa: My favorite is always blue oyster mushroom. It is mild and meaty. It’s very cooperative from a growth standpoint. It’s reliable. It’s cold tolerant. So we don’t have to spend a lot of money maintaining 85 degrees inside the building. It’s perfectly happy to fruit at 45 degrees, I find. That’s the mushroom I probably have the most history with, I would say. My least favorite is actually probably pink oyster mushroom. I grow them for shock value. People love them. I personally do not enjoy their fragrance signature, but they are beautiful. And if you want to compete with peaches in the summer, you better have some wow factor. So the combination of that pink oyster mushroom and the cheerful yellow of the Russian golden trumpets, the lavenders and soft blues of the oyster mushrooms, and this rich, rusty chestnut. When you put all of those together in a package, it is absolutely beautiful.
Lisa: I’m gonna grab that package really quick because I just want to reference it when we were talking, but this is absolutely gorgeous. And, like, this is so heavy. So do you have any of the Pink oysters in here now. Or I would guess no.
Rhysa: I don’t. They’re very finicky in the wintertime. They love it to be 90 degrees sweltering and unlivable in the grow room. And they’re just monstrous. They get huge and they’re very, very bright and beautiful. Right now, you have some lion’s mane
Lisa: that’s so beautiful
Rhysa: which according to my texts, packs a punch from a medicinal standpoint, it contains airinations which help regenerate the human myelin sheath. That one’s pretty cool. And then these are huge, like portabellos, but they’re actually chestnut mushrooms. This recipe is really excellent. I’ve just developed this. I’ve never seen chestnut mushrooms this big. I’m going to see if I can keep doing that. These little darlings are new. This is called Snow White and I love it. And underneath them you can see some blue oyster mushroom. You can see this really mammoth specimen.
Lisa: those are huge!
Rhysa: I’m showing off for you a little but there at the bottom of the box.
Lisa: I’ve never seen oyster mushrooms that large before.
Rhysa: I can grow them much bigger.
Lisa: Wow.
Rhysa: I have some that will not fit in that box right now.
Lisa: Wow, that’s amazing. And then these are the Russian.
Rhysa: Those are the Russian golden trumpets.
Lisa: Beautiful.
Rhysa: Yes. They’re so cheerful. I love putting them in a box like this.
Lisa: especially in the winter.
Rhysa: so you can see how when the pinks are cooperative again, if you put a couple of pink petals in the middle of that box, now you have a real family. You, you have a great family photo there.
Lisa: Beautiful. So one of the things I read on your website was that each mushroom has a preference for growing environment or it can be influenced by things like sounds. And I thought that was really cool. So like what kinds I guess what kinds of sounds or songs do you find they like? And how do you know when they like something?
Rhysa: They demonstrate signs of health to a keen eye. They’re very sensitive to vibrational disruption, to being manhandled. And something really unusual that I can’t back with any textbook research, but has been my experience for years, is that my mood seems to influence the quality of the product. If I am hurried, if I am over-tasked, upset, the quality of the product starts to go down. Despite using the exact same tried and true recipes and techniques. But this isn’t so far flung from people who are very good with horticulture. You can sell someone a tomato seedling with a set of instructions that should work. And for some people that tomato plant will thrive. It will do incredibly well. And. And for some people it will quickly blacken and die. I suppose this might not be so different.
Lisa: Interesting. Yeah.
Rhysa: But I have learned everything that I know from a few good textbooks and intuition. I watch them very closely. I tend to be a fairly quiet person. And every day I go through the warehouse and I examine hundreds of blocks. I check to see what their mood is, how quickly they’re running through their substrate. And I gauge what they’re enjoying based off of what I see. It’s not that scientific, I suppose, but it does work.
Lisa: Yeah, that’s fascinating, there’s so many things that you can’t explain, but you can see that they are or they’re working. but yeah, I was wondering if. If there’s like, ah. If they like classical music or if they like, you know, just ambient or if there’s any kind of specific music they like.
Rhysa: I listen to a little bit of everything. I love Latin music, for instance. I would say my taste in music ranges all across the board. So it’s just whatever I feel like listening to. And I keep it low. It’s just background. But it does help me to focus. And I feel happier when I’m working to music. I prefer a quiet work environment with minimal human interaction. And I really enjoy spending time with all those blocks.
Lisa: It’s like perfect fit. And most of it, I mean, so you’re probably doing like what percentage of the work has to be done by hand?
Rhysa: All of it. It’s all by hand at this time. I do have plans to build machinery and I know where to get the pieces that I need. My educational background is actually in automotive and diesel mechanics. So it’s not difficult for me to take machines apart, weld them back together and come up with something that will meet my needs. That is on the horizon. I’ll have to check with the town of Palisade before I make anything too monstrous or noisy. But I have access to a lot of antiquated farm equipment that’s made from really good stuff. That served purposes not so far flung from what I need now. And I have discussed with some family members buying, these whole chunks of steel for me to fabricate something new. Save all of our backs at the warehouse down the street.
Lisa: So where can people find your mushrooms now?
Rhysa: The little retail packages are available at Blaine’s, Fisher’s Meats, Meadowlark Gardens, Skip’s. That might be everyone at the moment. But this is the slow season
Lisa: Right.
Rhysa: When the produce stands reopen, there’ll be more.
Lisa: And any restaurants that you supply?
Rhysa: Yeah, Caroline’s down the street is doing some great things. Or if you want to go out for date night on Valentine’s Day and go to Spoons and hang out with Chef Martin. Pablo’s just ran a really great pizza special. It was so delicious with the garlic cream sauce and fresh tarragon and the blue oyster mushrooms. I brought that home and it was gone immediately. And my kids also, I would imagine are tired of mushrooms. But that pizza did not last. And Paul is such a nice guy at Pablo’s. Café Sol. And I think once our sort of busy season hits, it may be difficult for me to keep up.
Lisa: When is the busy season?
Rhysa: Really April I would say is when it starts to ramp up significantly. We’re going to start to see an increase in demand for local produce before that. But probably June, July is when it begins to become difficult to keep up. Through the end of October, I would say.
Lisa: like farmer market season.
Rhysa: Farmers market season. And I’ve spoken with a lot of people in agriculture that’s available to the general public and they all report largely the same. People just kind of stop eating during the wintertime. Maybe they’re all buying from just regular grocery stores, I’m not sure.
Lisa: Yeah, yeah. Eating comfort food and unhealthy comfort food I should say. yeah. So what are you planning for the future? Is there any kind of like. I think I saw something on the website about maybe doing classes someday. maybe some other types of retail things.
Rhysa: I would love that. The building that we’re in currently is not conducive to those goals. It is a short term lease. This is just to demonstrate what is possible. Bringing visitors in for classes poses a tremendous risk to my crop.
Lisa: Right. Makes sense.
Rhysa: People who have been out gardening or composting will have many, many microorganisms clinging to their clothes and shoes.
Lisa: I’m picturing the little chipmunk right now in your mushrooms.
Rhysa: The fewer chipmunks in the lab, the better.
Lisa: that makes sense.
Rhysa: And the retail space, we would have to build something additional for that. We’re finding that the level of production that we’re aiming for takes up most of the space that we have. So cordoning off an area for retail isn’t really feasible at the moment. We’ll see what the Heberts decide to do. It would definitely be well received by this town. I get a lot of questions about that. Having an option to do some agritourism, some direct retail sales, classes. I think that would all be a wonderful direction to go, but not in this building and not without more help. We would have to hire more people to make that work.
Lisa: But that would be such a cool agritourism type thing. Or even just for locals. I mean, it would be a lot of fun to have something. It’s just such a different thing, you know, you know a lot about peaches, there’s a lot about wine. But just a new thing that’s really cool.
Rhysa: I think having a class at a different venue would be possible. I can continue to teach for CMU, but I suspect that there’s some smaller little outfit here in town where we could do something like that and that’d be really fun. I love hands on projects. In all my classes, people usually leave with a pet, something for them to track the health of. And then of course they all have my email so we can communicate about what happened later and I really enjoy that. I enjoy taking a box of mushrooms like I’ve brought for you today and say you know you eat 90% of this and then with the remaining 10%, start your own garden in the box that it came in.
Lisa: What could you start your own garden with? Like what parts?
Rhysa: Okay, so this snow white right here, you could sever the stem, chop it into small pieces, soak the cardboard in water, wring it out until it’s at field capacity and it’s nice and pliant and smooshy but not waterlogged. And roll up those minced stems in the cardboard. And then you just have to provide an environment that will maintain the humidity. An old Ziploc bag that hasn’t been closed off all the way. An old spring mix container with holes in it. One of our compostable containers that had mushrooms in it previously is perfect because it’s already got the breather holes and you just let it sit in there. And for the blue oyster, the Russian golden trumpet, or the snow white, any of those will overtake the cardboard within a week to 10 days and begin to form primordia or baby mushrooms. And mushrooms will sprout and grow right in the container.
Lisa: I’m going to do this. That’s so cool. Oh, I love it. That’s such a cool thing. So if somebody wanted to, like, if there was a business in town that wanted to reach out to you to have a class like that or something like that, would you. Could they email you?
Rhysa: Sure, sure. They could go to our website. Monumentalmushrooms.com. I respond to all those emails. We could set something up. It would have to be an evening class likely, because I do work very hard all days.
Lisa: Yeah, that makes sense.
Rhysa: But I love teaching. I love it and I suspect that I always will do it.
Lisa: Is there anything that I didn’t ask you about that you think is really important about, anything you do or just anything related to mushrooms?
Rhysa: Well I’m just flipping through the microfiche in my mind of what else might be of interest. We might discuss some of the culinary potential of some of these mushrooms. I feel that when you have a very fresh product and you can’t do any better than this, I cut these for you. Not only are they going to last a long time, but the flavor is so good in something that is so fresh and so well tended. You don’t have to employ a lot of fancy culinary techniques to make something delicious. Just rough chop, cook in butter or fat equivalent, and have it with rice and green onion. Have it in an omelet. It doesn’t have to be something really complicated. Ramen noodles. Throw it in some ramen. and if you feel that this is too much to eat right away, dry them out, dry them completely, which is easy in our climate. If you have a dehydrator, then it’s real fast, but you can dry them all the way and then keep them in a jar, a flip top jar for a very long time. And you can get into that jar and break pieces off and add them to your cuisine for months. Months. And that’s part of the reason I love these boxes. It allows the mushrooms to breathe. So they’re gonna brown a little bit on the gills and on the edges of the caps immediately. But that’s good. That browning eliminates, all the availability of moisture for other little microorganisms to hang out. So it kind of makes like a skin and then they defend the interior with their immune systems. They’ll stay alive like that for a while.
Lisa: interesting. Definitely not too much for me to eat. I love mushrooms.
Rhysa: They do cook down quite a lot.
Lisa: Exactly right. I know it’s always like, aw.
Rhysa: So the other day I roasted a bunch of these chestnut mushrooms. I was running many simultaneous experiments and recipes with them to try and get these results. The result of many of those experiments was highly productive. So I had to take home a gunnysack worth of chestnut mushrooms to cook. I roasted the majority of them with just a little salt and some high quality olive oil from Bella Balsamic. I don’t know if you like their stuff, but I do. Portioned it out, put it in the freezer. And I’ve been drawing from that stash of chestnut mushrooms for quick weeknight dinners. I love it. It’s working out very well. I’ve gone several different directions with it from classic Grand Valley grandmother cooking. Bacon, onions, garlic, green beans, to Italian, Italian sausage, caramelized onion. I did some with chorizo. Sky’s the limit. And then you can keep them for a long time. They’re ready to go.
I might also mention that there are many appropriate food sources for mushrooms. You needn’t necessarily utilize sterilized sawdust. Pasteurization is a great low tech, low cost way to go. And they respond well to wheat straw, a few other, corn cobs. There are many types of agricultural waste that you could employ without purchasing a big expensive autoclave like what I use now. I think it’s a very generally available type of agriculture for most people and could, just like I have woven it seamlessly into this community using waste products, you could weave it into an existing business model. And that’s something that we’re going to discuss at length in Chef Wayne’s sustainable cuisine classes. Someone who wants to grow green beans or someone who wants to grow tomatoes, they want to have a business where they sell eggs. How can you weave all of these things together and maybe incorporate mushrooms? As a primary decomposer they almost certainly have a role to play. Even if it’s just really excellent quality soil.
Lisa: Yeah. Which is really important.
Rhysa: Yeah, yeah. Like I mentioned before in Palisade, in the Grand Valley, our soil is very fungal deficient. If you have a skilled hand with making spent substrate, whether it’s from a pasteurized source or sterilized like I use, you’re now generating a very valuable additive to the soil. The water retention capabilities of that spent substrate are incredible. And in this valley where we have to be so careful with our water usage. Think that could help so many folks here. Highly encourage.
Lisa: when you say pasteurization for things like corn cobs. You mean just boiling them?
Rhysa: Well not quite boiling, about 175 degrees for an hour will do it. On things like I’ve mentioned that have a low density. So if you had a block of wood the center of the block of wood would not reach 175 degrees but something that’s been shredded like straw, grass clippings they’re so I mean just the sky’s the limit. Especially for oyster mushrooms. They’ll eat anything. You can just bring it up to 175 degrees thereabouts, either with steam or hot water, I mean, solar. There’s so many ways you could go. So here you know a greenhouse, a hoop house can approach those temperatures in the summer if you don’t use something to cool it. It wouldn’t take much to just kind of supplement that heat and you could potentially have a wetted substrate that you just use our climate to pasteurize. Then once it has cooled, you just infect it with that organism either with mycelial fragments like I discussed earlier, cutting up pieces of stems, or you could buy a culture. You could buy what’s called grain spawn which is basically a more potent form of mycelial fragments and you could make quite a lot. And the bio efficiency of oyster mushrooms grown on straw or on corn cobs it’s like 100, can even be 200 percent. So a 30 pound bale of wheat straw which costs roughly $12 could yield 30 to 60 pounds of fresh mushrooms.
Lisa: That’s amazing.
Rhysa: If you know what you’re doing and you’re welcome to email me or take classes and I’ll show you.
Lisa: all the class information is on CMU website I’m assuming?
Rhysa: it is. It is just under culinary mushroom cultivation. And they also send out that mailer. It’s like a little newspaper mailer.
Lisa: Well, this has been really great. I think I learned some things that I didn’t know before and I’m really excited about and I think people are gonna be really interested to hear about what you’re doing.
Rhysa: There’s so much to talk about, but I feel that we’ve covered a lot of the best points.
Lisa: Yeah. Well, I’m excited for what you’re doing and definitely excited to see just what the future holds for the company and for a possible future like agritourism type event or thing here in Palisade and also just eating the mushrooms. So thank you so much. I really appreciate you bringing these and I really appreciate your time.
Rhysa: You’re so welcome, anytime. Thanks for having me.
Lisa: Thanks for being here.
I happily took my gorgeous box of Monumental Mushrooms home to show off to Paul. I was most excited about the lion’s mane, which I’ve never eaten before but find so fascinatingly beautiful. It kind of looks like a head of coral, in a way. That night we diced the lion’s mane up, sautéed it in butter, and served it on top of gnocchi. Which was not the best way to serve it because it cooked up rich and heavy and gnocchi is also so rich and heavy. But hey, it was a cold day and really, there’s no way to go wrong when you’re experimenting with such a delicious product.
The rest of the box’s contents got diced, sautéed in a little bacon fat, and tossed on top of a pizza, which as Rhysa suggested, was the perfect way to enjoy these mushrooms. Also, in terms of growing my own mushrooms, I decided I’m going to leave that to the experts. After tasting these mushrooms, I know there’s no way I can compete with the quality of mushrooms that Rhysa can grow.
Go grab a box and try your own culinary experiments, and let us know what you do. They’re so beautiful that you’ll almost not want to cut them up and eat them. Almost…
The podcast’s theme music is Riverbend by Geoff Roper.
Thanks for listening. With love, from Palisade.