How we do it:
From its inception, Mycelial Minds has been focused on growing delicious, local, and organic mushrooms. We also knew that we wanted to do things differently than so many other farms and make a conscious effort to be good stewards of our environment as well as our customers. But first things first, let's explore the fascinating process of mushroom cultivation.
It all begins with mycelium
Mycelium is the underground living part of all mushrooms. It is the small white threads that you may see on the forest floor or growing across a leaf in your yard. In order to grow mushrooms, you must first grow mycelium. This is done under sterile conditions in a laboratory setting by inoculating agar plates from established cultures. Once the mycelium has taken hold and expanded, it is transferred to cooked grains known as “grain spawn”.
Once inoculated, the mycelium grows and eats its way through the grain over a 14-21 day period. As it moves through, it uses the high nutrient value of the grain to build up its energy stores. Once the grain is fully overtaken by the mycelium, it is transferred yet again to a bulk substrate.
This is the final stage of cultivation before we finally get to actual mushrooms! The grain spawn is mixed into sterilized substrate and then vacuum sealed in plastic bags. The bulk substrate used is primarily oak wood sawdust and it takes the mycelium from 4 to up to 12 weeks to fully colonize this.
Finally- after weeks of work, both from us and the mycelium, we get beautiful, delicious mushrooms
So how is Mycelial Minds different?
A core tenet of ours is sustainability, both environmentally and economically. The current system in place for almost every farm in this country is the same: the farm produces food, they sell this food to a distributor, the distributor holds it until they can sell it to a grocery store or restaurant, and then it finally gets to you. There are so many issues with this system it can be hard to keep them all straight. Most farms have to mass produce their products in order to financially sustain themselves because of the bulk discounts received by purchasing distributors and then they eat some of the cost as their product potentially ship across the country. Producing so much at once means its impossible to maintain top quality. Distributors then may have to hold that product, if they can’t sell it immediately, resulting in a less fresh and disappointing product for you, the customer. Restaurants and grocery stores have to mark up the product’s price due to distributor mark up. This finally leaves you, with more expensive, lower quality food than you deserve, all the while burning alot of CO2 emissions by moving everything from place to place. But luckily that’s where we come in.
We grow, harvest, handle, and hand deliver all of our mushrooms, exclusively in all-electric vehicles
This means higher quality and fresher mushrooms, because we have control of every aspect of the process. We are able to deliver directly to your favorite local stores and restaurants. This means less CO2 emissions because the mushrooms only go from our local farm to your plate or grocery cart. This also means lower prices for you, because our partners don’t have to pay markups created by distributors.