Characters from a Mushroom Farm Tour

This weekend, my boyfriend and I went on a tour of a local mushroom farm. The tour was wildly informative thanks to our mad-mushroom-scientist guide who told us all about his professional at-home mushroom experimentation setup and consumption habits. At the end of the tour we were each given a generous bag of assorted mushrooms, and we also picked up some lion’s mane mushrooms and tinctures.

It was a great experience and I won’t ruin the interesting facts and unique stories from this tour by sharing them online, but something that struck me was the variety of characters who attended. We were a group of 9, and the ages ranged from mid-twenties to early seventies. Three characters stuck out to me the most.

(Disclaimer: names are fictional to preserve privacy)

Debra is your typical Whole Foods customer. A lady in her early sixties with a desire to know everything there is about mushrooms and longevity. She had short curly grey hair and was wearing a bright puffer jacket with hiking boots, highlighting her interest in exploring the natural world.

When our guide asked us “has anyone heard of blue zones?” all of us stared blankly back except for Debra, who informed us that it’s an area where 10% of the population reaches 100 years old. She asked exactly which mushrooms she should be eating and whether tinctures and ground powders were sufficient to obtain their benefits. Upon hearing that most mushroom powders contain little to no amounts of fruiting body (due to a lack of supplement regulation), she described exactly how she would make her own powders directly from mushrooms.

A guy in his mid-twenties who wanted to know (a) how to grow mushrooms and (b) can I eat this off the log right now? He was dressed in all-black baggy clothing with a black beanie, giving him a laid back skater look.

If I had a nickel for every time Emmanuel asked “how long since that bag was inoculated?” I’d have 25 cents. He asked about the variety of environments that each mushroom thrived in and the effectiveness of different substrates (such as sawdust, rye berries, millet, and popcorn). He was also interested in purchasing growing bags in bulk to set up some kind of home operation.

Emmanuel asked our guide whether he’d be able to eat a fist-sized lion’s mane mushroom “raw, like an apple”. Our guide responded that about 10% of people have a raw mushroom allergy — he, unfortunately, is one of those people. He suggested that Emmanuel find a day where he has nothing going on, eat a raw mushroom, and see if he ends up spending the day on the toilet. After we concluded the tour and received our complementary bag of assorted mushrooms, Emmanuel popped a raw mushroom in his mouth.

Sierra is a woman in her early thirties, wearing a fashionable black and army green athliesure set with a ponytail and sunglasses. She and her boyfriend showed up 5 minutes late to the tour (she apologized, saying that they had a coffee spill incident).

I didn’t think much of Sierra initially, but about halfway through the tour I noticed that she’d pulled out a clipboard and had a page full of handwritten notes. When we were on the topic of supplements and tinctures, she asked how much mushroom is used in a single capsule, and then inquired about why we don’t see more mushroom supplements in tablet form. Later on Sierra asked about regulation around medicinal supplements — our guide informed her that she’ll want to avoid making any claims about curing conditions or diseases in order to avoid “silver bracelets” from her business ambitions.