Growing Mushrooms in New England
“The lion’s mane does not like to be dripped on,” Julia Coffey informs me, “so it sits on the top shelf of this greenhouse.” The founder of Mycoterra Farm, a leading small-scale, year-round mushroom farm in Massachusetts, knows exactly what makes her edible fungi tick. When she first started bringing her quaintly named native mushrooms to farmers markets, people didn’t exactly line up to buy them. She had to work to build a following.
Coffey also took her mushrooms to restaurants for chefs to sample. One early taker was Dolly Bourommavong, chef de cuisine at Metropolis Café in Boston. To her, the shredded lion’s mane, which look like albino broccoli heads, resembled crabmeat, so she used them to create vegetarian crab cakes. Now she is experimenting with other varieties of mushrooms. “I’ve been using Mycoterra mushrooms for about three years now,” she says. “They have such great flavor. It is consistent. And it’s local. Can’t beat that.”
Thanks to endorsements from discerning clients like Bourommavong, the owners of Mycoterra Farm are now expanding their business-moving their farm from their home in Westhampton to a 21,000-square-foot building on five acres in Deerfield.
Coffey started Mycoterra Farm in 2011, glowing oyster mushrooms in the basement of her rented house in the woodlands of Westhampton, the town where she was born and raised. The farmers markets in nearby Northampton and Williamsburg had other produce: fruits, vegetables, dairy products and meat. But there were no gourmet mushrooms; that niche was hers to fill. She now owns the house she had rented. Her parents live next door, in the house where she grew up. She operates Mycoterra with her boyfriend, Chris Haskell. lla, their toddler, ambles around the wooded lot barefoot. “She loves her winter boots, but it is hard to get her to keep sandals or sneakers on,” the mom farmer says. Like the little girl, their business is all set to grow.
Mycoterra, which sells mushrooms direct to customers at farmers markets and delivers to restaurants, also offers mushroom club cards.