BETHEL — When Amanda Moran of Newry was a child, she thought it was great when a friend showed her family how to forage for black trumpet mushrooms in their Biddeford backyard.
Mushroom forager Amanda Moran of Newry rests on on the Bethel Village Trails. Rose Lincoln/The Bethel Citizen
Moran hung on to that memory and more recently became “kind of obsessed” about everything mushrooms. Initially she taught herself from an Audubon Society guide, but eventually from anything else she could find, too.
The former owner of Nabos gift shop in Bethel watched a lecture on YouTube by mycologist Paul Stamets, well-known in the mushroom world. The lecture was so old he was using a slide projector, she said. But she watched it anyway. “I was trying to absorb everything I could.”
She has over 20 mushroom books in her collection and has become a resource for others, especially people trying to identify a mushroom. Sometimes she can help, other times the mushrooms are dirt covered or impossible to identify because of the way the photograph was taken.
Sometimes people will come into her workplace, Steam Mill Brewing in Bethel, to ask her to identify mushrooms they found. Sometimes she has to say, “dude those are only LBMs (little brown mushrooms).”
Moran said she’ll know further into June and July if it will be a good mushroom year.” She said September is that magic month when the most varieties of mushrooms are out.
“If you’re super lucky you’ll find a morel, right now. I have yet to find a morel,” she said. “Oyster mushrooms are starting to pop out. Coming end of June or July, we’ll start getting the chanterelles and trumpets.” She said the chicken of the woods variety will come out now and again in September.
Sarah and Chuck Patten hold king oyster mushrooms May 10 at Shady Grove Mushrooms in Harrison. Rose Lincoln/The Bethel Citizen
Last year at this time, she was with a friend on Route 232 when she excitedly pulled off to the side of the road. Using a long stick she broke a large bunch of oyster mushrooms high up, off a tree. Her friend subsequently made lots mushroom quiche with their cache.
Moran has led mushroom walks and talks for several area nonprofits and in September will host a class at Valentine Farm in Bethel.
Those black trumpet mushrooms she discovered as a child she now knows well, “they like leaf litter, deer paths and streams. They hide really well and you can be stepping on them before you even know it,” she said.
Moran is a buyer at Shady Grove Mushrooms in Harrison owned by Sarah and Chuck Patten.
When their house started to smell from decaying mushrooms, the couple knew it was time to move the business out of their master bathroom.
Shady Grove Mushrooms began in 2008 when Sarah told Chuck he needed a hobby. He researched lucrative ones and found mushroom-growing.
HARRISON, ME. MAY 10, 2023: Sarah and Chuck Patten grow mushrooms at Shady Grove Mushrooms, their Harrison Maine farm.(Staff Photo by Rose Lincoln/Bethel Citizen) Rose Lincoln
The Pattens live in Harrison sharing a 33-acre homestead with their parents; son, daughter-in-law and grandchild; some chickens and broilers; and a dog. They estimate they grow 80% of their own food, in addition to the thousands of mushrooms they grow for others.
Part of their cultivation happens year-round, inside a temperature and humidity controlled building. The other part is in the nearby woods where mushrooms are seeded and grown out of multiple logs that line pathways.
It took a few years but Chuck eventually learned how to grow lots of shitakes on logs.
His background in mechanical and electrical engineering helped him figure out how to control the humidity and oxygen in the indoor grow building they later built. It might have cost up to $40,000 to build, but with his background in engineering, they built it for under $5,000 and it typically costs around $30 in electric per month to run.
The couple can cultivate as many as 300 pounds of mushrooms per week inside. During the summer they become indoor and outdoor producers of 700 pounds a week.
Inside the grow building are fruiting blocks, cubes about 1 foot by 1 foot. They are made of sawdust and soybean hulls. The Patten’s use one cup of grain spawn seed to inoculate a five-pound fruiting block.
Once the mushrooms fruit they pick them off and compost the fruiting blocks in their vegetable gardens.
From “spore to store” a phrase growers use, varies by mushroom type. For instance, the king oysters take three to four weeks from inoculation to growth.
Several logs line curving paths in a grove in the woods, where hemlock needles are soft underfoot. A small pond and bridge are to one side of the grove. The passive climate-controlled pods they use in the summer are on the other side of the grove. It’s a little too early now, but as the weather warms, mushrooms will grow from all the logs.
The logs are rotated in and out every five weeks.
Chuck said people claim the wood must be oak. “That is baloney,” he said. “Oak, maple, birch everything works. As long as it’s not pine or hemlock.”
His logs are 3 to 6 inches in diameter. Larger diameters will work, too, but they are harder to pickup and flush (or soak), so he uses the smaller size.
If someone wants to try their hand at growing, the Pattens will sell them a log, preinoculated and ready to flush.
They grow a wide variety of mushrooms, shiitakes, pioppino, lion’s mane, wine cap and king oyster. Many other varieties too: pink, grey, yellow, blue, black and Italian. The blue oyster is their most popular mushroom so they grow those all year long.
Flavors of mushrooms vary, the Pattens say. The king oyster mimics scallops, the pink oyster tastes like bacon and the lion’s mane tastes like crabmeat.
They sell out by the end of each week to co-ops, markets and farms in and around Harrison. They sell to Fair Share in Norway, Old Mill Tavern in Harrison and to Norway Brewing. They meet a Bangor distributer each week who distributes in that area and Meryl Kelly swings by regularly to distribute in the Bethel area.
They believe the mushroom business in Maine has room to grow and, like Moran, are not afraid to share what they have learned, offering instructional videos online. For instance, Chuck’s process for using so few amps in the grow building is something he plans to teach others soon.
“It’s hard work,” Sarah said.
“If you’re going to be a mushroom grower you have to do it full-time,” Chuck said.
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