Mushrooms are quickly becoming a staple of Snohomish County as Black Forest Mushrooms joins the repertoire of stores in downtown Everett.
After thriving at local farmers’ markets and their weekly delivery service, the business’s first storefront opened at 2110 Hewitt Ave earlier this month.
Founder Nathanael Engen takes great care of and pride in his mushrooms.
While working, Engen likes to converse with his beautiful fungi. Almost as if he’s talking to a pet, he says, “You guys are looking so good.”
Engen describes the storefront as a place separate from home and work, that focuses on community engagement and education.
Having “a retail storefront where people can come in for fresh mushrooms is a huge priority, but we’d love a flex space for community engagement,” he said.
The grand opening on Saturday, Dec. 9, started at 11 a.m. with a “Mushroom Happy Hour.” There were samples of the mushroom products Black Forest Mushrooms sells, as well as mushroom pastries and mushroom coffee from South Fork Baking Co. (a local Everett business) and Wunderground Coffee (a local Seattle business).
At noon, the Downtown Everett Association held a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
It’s a “huge step for [the] company,” Engen said.
After the ceremony, Black Forest Mushrooms conducted their first mushroom harvest in their new location. Attendees toured the farm and storefront, bought mushrooms and mushroom products, and left prepared to taste the never-ending adventure that mushrooms hold.
Farming mushrooms takes a lot of effort, from carefully monitoring the farm’s growing conditions to harvesting at peak ripeness.
“The entire process … is about two months,” Engen said.
Engen begins the growing processes by creating a mycelium, a quasi-root system for the fungi, followed by a substrate mixed in hardwood sawdust and soybean hulls – everything a mushroom needs to live.
Sealed in a grow bag, the young mushrooms breathe filtered air before being moved to incubation. There, the young’un will grow and overtake the production block, rapidly gaining all the nutrients they need.
After a few weeks in incubation, they’re moved to the fruiting chamber, where they grow the fruiting bodies that we eat.
With the stringent heat, humidity, light intensity, and CO2 requirements, this whole cycle mimics a fungi’s natural growing cycle, allowing for year-round cultivation of these delicious guys. While the growing process is relatively short, compared to other growable crops, it requires such a high level of upkeep and contamination control that you would think you were helping a NASA contractor build a satellite.
“When we go into the lab, we are the dirtiest thing in that lab, even if we just showered,” Engen said.
Contaminants capable of eliminating Engen’s farm can hitch rides on air molecules.
“We listen to music while cleaning, but don’t sing, even with a mask on. You can see the difference in your contamination rate,” he said.
This type of farming is called Controlled Environment Agriculture, or CEA. CEA offers many benefits compared to traditional agriculture, namely the reduction in water and pesticide usage. However, one downside to this is the high upfront starting cost. This, coupled with the high price of starting a business on its own, presented a challenge for Engen.
“As an entrepreneur with no shortage of drive or vision, the biggest challenge is finding the opportunity to fight for your ideas. There are strings attached, hoops to jump through, and starting a new business requires an exorbitant amount of upfront cash flow,” he said.
Engen’s hard work paid off, with Black Forest Mushrooms taking Snohomish County by storm. By sharing mushroom recipes and products, including mushroom jerky, Black Forest Mushroom fulfills its vision of expanding the community’s knowledge.
The company has three main goals: provide high quality and more mushroom diversity in the local community, address the rising concerns for the security of our local food supply chain, and help fight climate change with more sustainable farming practices.
Engen is living his entrepreneurial dream, offering a wide variety of mushroom products to people in the community.
There is one product, however, that remains an elephant in the room.
When thinking of mushrooms, many people think of the ones that can make you a fun guy. Psilocybin is a chemical that occurs naturally in certain types of mushrooms and is metabolized in the body to create hallucinogenic effects that are associated with mushrooms as a whole.
Black Forest Mushrooms, while “interested in ongoing research,” does not offer magic mushrooms. According to their Eventbrite page, they “specialize in gourmet, non-psychoactive mushrooms and don’t offer psilocybin.”
So, while you can’t find magic mushrooms, you’re sure to find magic in the mushrooms at Black Forest Mushrooms.
The storefront is “a space where the community can gather, learn, and share in the joy of nature’s bounty,” Engen said.
