In no time, our little farm was firing on all cylinders… and we grew a ton of mushrooms! More than we even knew what to do with.
It was awesome!
I quickly learned, however, that mushroom farming is…well… farming. It’s a ton of work.
Not only that, it’s a tough business.
The process of growing mushrooms at scale is labor intensive (even though I loved doing it), margins are thin, and trying to sell a quick-to-spoil fresh product is a challenge at the best of times.
That being said, I still think it’s definitely possible to succeed as a mushroom farming business – in fact, there are many fine folks doing it right now… but being a full time mushroom farmer… well, it wasn’t for me.
I wanted more.
Back when I was building the farm, I also started freshcapmushrooms.com, as a way to have an online presence for the farm. I started writing an article here and there about mushroom cultivation, mushroom foraging, and just basically sharing everything that I have learned. I didn’t really expect anybody to find it. I was just having fun.
But over the next number of months, more and more people kept coming to the site… people interested in learning about how to grow mushrooms.
Before I knew it, I was sharing knowledge about mushroom cultivation with people from all over the world!
As I was teaching others, I continued to learn more and more about the amazing world of mushrooms myself.
This inspired a new vision… teaching the world how to grow mushrooms at home!
Why don’t more people grow mushrooms? I couldn’t quite figure it out… for some reason growing mushrooms is a mystery to most.
Sure it’s a little bit more complicated than having a vegetable garden… but why is that so? Does it need to be that way?
What if I could help make growing mushrooms at home more accessible?
What if I could demystify mushrooms?
Even though the farm wasn’t “in business”, I still grew lots of mushrooms. I still walked trails every day, with my head awkwardly scanning the ground and the trees looking for wild mushrooms. I still kept testing, exploring and playing with the art of cultivation.
In fact, you could say that I was a little bit obsessed. (…I still am)
But I couldn’t keep it all to myself.
So, I set out to write as many helpful articles as I could. I even started a YouTube channel, and eventually plan on making a completely free online course to teach people how to grow mushrooms from scratch.