Local Lunch, part 17: Couple adds mushrooms to local food palette

Sylvia and David White find themselves explaining what is going on behind those locked doors before visitors ask. It doesn’t help that fans continually vent air from the sealed rooms. Yes, they have a little grow-operation, but it is mushrooms, the legal kind, that they are growing.

The young couple purchased a seven-acre bed and breakfast property in Erickson in 2006 and moved here from Vancouver the following year.

“We didn’t find Creston so much as it found us,” Sylvia said.

She and her husband had visited the Yukon with the idea of “doing something with accommodations.” Originally, they thought they might open a hostel with another couple of friends.

“It’s by accident, really, that we found this place,” she said.

David’s mom’s best friend lives here and Sylvia learned that the Goat River Bed and Breakfast was for sale. The rest, as she said, is history.

”We love it here,” she said.

She and David wanted to raise their family in a small town, something they both were familiar with. Sylvia was raised in a rural Polish community and David grew up in Port Hardy. Their decision to come to Creston met with their families` approval. Both sets of parents have followed them to the valley, influenced by the birth of their granddaughter, Isabella, 19 months ago.

The decision to try growing mushrooms commercially came out of the fact that their property is in the Agricultural Land Reserve.

”A huge part of it is that we`d like to stay in the valley and we need something else to pay the bills,” Sylvia said.

Their previous vocations — David is a video game artist and Sylvia sold real estate — didn’t prepare them for an agricultural endeavour. But they have friends who grow mushrooms in the Lower Mainland. Sylvia`s dad tried growing mushrooms in his home and it worked, so they decided to give it a try.

The Whites did plenty of Internet research and their supplier has been very supportive, even coming out to Creston to tell them what they needed to do to get going.

The mushrooms are grown in a substrate of alder sawdust, organic bran and limestone flour. The mix is packed into plastic “logs” and inoculated with mushroom spores. The logs are placed on steel shelves in a room that has a tightly-controlled environment. Growers must provide the correct humidity and temperature, and ensure that unwanted competition, like moulds and bacteria, don’t enter the growing medium.

“Our first batch of oyster mushrooms didn’t do so well,” David said. “The information we read said they need 90 to 95 per cent humidity and I was vacuuming a half-inch of water off the floor every couple of days. Eventually mould started to grow, so we tossed out the batch and started again. Now we are using less humidity and trying to find a level that suits the oyster mushrooms best.”

The mushrooms, oyster and shitake varieties at this point, grow out of slits in the plastic bags in a matter of weeks.

Since harvesting their first crop last month, Sylvia and David have had a very positive response. They have sold the mushrooms at the Creston Valley Farmers’ Market, and friends who produce other products will help them sell in Nelson and Cranbrook markets, too.

An application has been made through the Kootenay Local Agricultural Society to have their operation certified through the Kootenay Mountain Grown program. Inspections have been conducted and David and Sylvia are awaiting word that they have been accredited. The inoculated substrate used by Goat River Mushroom Co. is produced by a certified organic grower.

The Whites are currently only at 25 per cent of their production capacity but new shipments of the mushroom logs are on order and will arrive regularly over the coming weeks so that the two rooms (each type of mushroom needs its own environment) will be full and a regular harvest can be assured. If their initial foray into mushroom growing is successful, a new building will be constructed so that production can be increased to meet market demands.

Members of the Creston Valley Food Action Coalition, Sylvia and David said the organization has been very supportive and that it is exciting to be part of an agricultural community that encourages innovation and competition.

“We are really pleasantly surprised with what is going on here,” Syliva said. “With the food action coalition and the College of the Rockies there is so much support — it’s great to be a part of it.”

The Whites are hoping to have a sufficient supply of mushrooms ready for this weekend’s Creston Valley Farmers’ Market at Millennium Park. They have a pamphlet explaining how to store the fungi. It also provides information about the nutritional values of each variety. Oyster mushrooms, surprisingly, contain protein levels nearly equal to that in animal meat.

Sylvia said there is another reason that growing mushrooms appeals to the couple.

“It’s completely waste-free,” she said. “If there are mushrooms left over they can be dried, or cooked and frozen. The substrate makes great compost.”

For more information about the Goat River Mushroom Co., email Sylvia and David at grmushco @ telus.net (remove spaces to email).

Article from Creston Valley Advance.