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What do an abandoned coal mine shaft in Pennsylvania, a decommissioned underground parking lot in Paris, and, a vacant milking parlour in Warkworth, Ontario, have in common? They’re all spaces that have been repurposed into mushroom farms.

According to Mushrooms.ca, there are just over 100 mushroom farms in Canada, growing over 91,000 tonnes of that little white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus, with 50 per cent of Canada’s mushroom production in Ontario. And while buttons are still king in Canada, a handful of adventurous growers are cultivating colourful, fascinating, delicious, and often rare varieties in some pretty inventive places.

In Trent Hills, about an hour and a half northeast of Toronto, Derick Greenly, of Summergreen Farm, is reinventing his family’s old woodlot and dairy farm into a thriving gourmet mushroom business.

Shiitake and other exotic fungi can be grown outdoors in a natural setting on inoculated logs, but hungry wildlife, from deer to slugs, and icy winters are a problem, so taking it inside, as long as the conditions are just right, is the smartest and safest way to grow fancy fungi all year long.

Greenly is a third-generation farmer, with interruptions. After several years of travelling and busking with his Celtic harp in tow, he returned to his family’s 75 acres of pasture, orchard, woodlot and dairy buildings, just outside of the little town of Warkworth.

It was after his grandfather died, that he felt a pull to come home, but he wasn’t interested in traditional dairy farming. Years on the road had exposed him to other, more exciting ways of growing food, and that made him feel there was room for his artistic bent, so he came back to give it a go.

What was started by his grandfather, conventional dairy and traditional cash crops, Greenly has transformed into a fruit and nut tree nursery and mushroom farm, with plenty of space for experimentation, creativity, and his mom’s beloved alpacas.

Outside it’s humid, overripe. The land is cloaked in wildflowers and tall grasses; cicada buzz in the August heat, and the sun beats down on the old, greying barns. An ancient Massey Ferguson tractor is parked permanently, weeds growing from its grill. Inside, it’s another climate — another world — altogether. The old milking parlour is now the incubation barn, and it’s being kitted out in order to baby Greenly’s menu of mushrooms; an old bullpen is now a sterile lab, where spore is started in Petri dishes; and the old poultry abattoir has been repurposed into a moist, cool, cavelike fruiting room, where lion’s mane, chestnut, elm, hen-of-the-woods, pioppino and pink oyster mushrooms poke out from blocks of growing medium or substrate, inoculated hardwood sawdust, maple, hickory, oak and birch. Curiously, a fan circulates the air at floor level, because, as Greenly explains, “Fungi are almost more like animals than plants in that they take in oxygen and exhale CO2, which is heavier than the air and sinks to the floor, so we need to keep that moving around.”

Despite the expression “mushrooming,” which implies speed, it’s a surprisingly slow process from spore to mature mushroom. To get from Petri dish to your dish, it can take up to eight weeks depending on species, with many steps and biosecurity protocols that must be followed meticulously. Which brings us to another misconception; that mushrooms are grown in manure. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. The growing medium must be cooked or steam cleaned of any pathogens or living interlopers; the air in the lab is filtered through a 6-inch-thick HEPA filter, and light, temperature and air flow are all closely controlled.

Greenly’s business is still young, and at this point he’s just keeping up with demand at farmers’ markets, but there is plenty of potential on this land he still shares with his parents. And unlike dairy cattle, mushrooms don’t take up a lot of space; they are grown close together, vertically, on shelves, making them a very space-efficient crop — a crop that can be shoehorned into an existing space.

In the town of Orono, also in Northumberland County, Dave Kranenburg is an extremely busy farmer with more projects on the go than might be considered sensible. With his wife, Emily Tufts, Kranenburg runs a virtual farmers’ market, Graze & Gather, while raising pastured poultry, eggs and fancy fungi at Kendall Hills Farm.

Once used to brood baby quail, Kranenburg has reformed the formerly-dilapidated concrete building into a perfect space for growing mushrooms. It’s a common misconception that mushrooms grow in the dark. While the growing rooms aren’t brightly lit, Kranenburg said his gourmet crop prefers a bit of sunshine. “I let them get some natural light through the windows,” said Kranenburg. “I find it improves both the colour and flavour.”

Kranenburg takes a low-tech approach, growing his mushrooms, (oysters, pioppino, lion’s mane, black pearl, beech) in an unheated area, so what he grows is dependent on the season and the outdoor air temperature.

Gourmet mushrooms are delicate. “The shelf-life of these specialty mushrooms is very short,” said Kranenburg. “They are at their best from seven to 10 days from when they are harvested. And though still edible at 10 to 20 days, they don’t look as nice, which is different than cremini or shiitake mushrooms, which have a much-longer shelf-life and are much more durable.”

“And so,” said Kranenburg. “The art of mushroom farming is to constantly have mushrooms at different stages of development so that you are picking fresh each week and timing it so that they are going out the door within 48 hours of harvest.”

Kranenburg grows 250 to 500 pounds per week, all year round. “It’s been a roller-coaster during the pandemic,” said Kranenburg. “As demand has ebbed and flowed. Restaurants love our mushrooms, and when many of them closed or pivoted it affected our mushroom growing. One of the challenges with these specialty varieties is that many home cooks are unfamiliar with them, and using them at home requires being bold and curious. But once someone tries them, they usually don’t go back to the basic button.”

All of this is why a tiny handful of exotic mushrooms can deliver sticker shock at checkout. Depending on the variety, one can spend between $21 to $35 a kilo. Still, folks are putting curiosity ahead of budget, and with all the recent attention being given to lion’s mane for its promising health benefits, more and more think it’s money well-spent.

Northwest of Toronto, in the farming community of Amaranth, Dufferin County, also a third-generation farmer, Sean Declerc, of Fresh and Tasty Mushrooms, is taking his family farm in a new direction, too. He grew up on this farm, which was started by his grandparents who raised livestock, but when his grandfather died in 2007, the family considered selling the land. Instead, Declerc decided to start growing mushrooms. He landed on shiitakes for his first crop since he enjoyed eating them and he noticed a growing market for them. Now, with his wife, Shannon Coleclough, the couple grow about 10 varieties of specialty mushrooms as well as produce, while engaging in regenerative farming practices: reduced tillage, cover crops, composting and soil rejuvenation.

The couple grow mushrooms in two rooms created inside the former cattle barn. “The barn had previously been home to beef cattle and rabbits,” said Coleclough. “Though there hadn’t been any in there for a number of years.” And while one might assume growing mushrooms is a less smelly pastime than raising animals, it still has its nose and throat hazards. “Because the mushrooms release spores,” said Coleclough. “We wear HEPA-filtered masks to keep our lungs clean.” For these, and many Canadians, farming fungi just makes sense. “Mushrooms can be grown year-round indoors,” said Coleclough. “And lots of cultures eat them.”

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