In Indiana, growing up, I knew two types of mushrooms:
- the rubbery button kind my mom grudgingly used, out of the can, in spaghetti and on homemade pizza, because Dad liked them. (Pennsylvania Dutchman brand); and
- the kind other people hunted for. (I had never heard of a morel before the 7th Grade, when during a sleepover at a classmate's house, her dad would not stop talking about the mushrooms he was going to bring home to fry up that afternoon.)
My family did not go mushroom hunting. We were not what some might call "outdoorsy."
I loved being outside, but I was the oddball in my family.
Camping? No.
Hiking? No way.
Mushroom hunting? Are you kidding?
To be fair, Dad has always loved yard work, but forests and wilderness were not part of our leisure activities.
The only reason I am here growing mushrooms now, is because my breast cancer diagnosis in 2003 sent me down a path of growing my own food and understanding where food comes from and how it works with our bodies; we started by growing veggies, berries, and flowers.
My partner had been thinking about growing mushrooms for years before we finally had the time, space, and bandwidth to actually start experimenting.
Before we started growing mushrooms in 2014, the most exciting mushroom I had ever eaten was the shiitake, in some kind of dish at a high-end Asian restaurant, and that didn't happen until I was well into my 20s.
When Darin suggested we get more serious about mushroom-growing, I initially balked.
I was not overly interested in growing mushrooms. I didn't understand how they grew. I didn't particularly eat lots of mushrooms or know how many types there might be. If I thought of mushrooms at all, it was usually as an afterthought.
Plants? Those, I understood.
Growing veggies and fruits, I knew what I was growing, and why, and what to do with it.
Fast forward to 2025.
To say my education of the last 10 years has been enlightening is an extreme understatement.
I won't go into all the details in this inaugural post -- I'll save something for upcoming blog posts. Suffice it to say, I have become a mushroom evangelist, a mycophile, a lover of fungi, and I have developed a fascination with these life-forms that goes way beyond enjoying a savoury mushroom soup.
In many ways, the strange trajectory of my life so far seems to have led me right to our fungal partners, and I will explore that in other posts, as well.
For now, welcome to the Frontier, where we live and breathe to understand and to work with our mushroom friends, for the greater good of our planet and each other.
