Ellijay, GA |
Known as the fungus among us, mushrooms are one of the most versatile ingredients to any dish. And this farm in Ellijay is looking to get them out of the dark and into the spotlight here in Georgia by inviting the public out to see exactly what goes into growing these culinary delicacies.
“We started out with agritourism with our farm shop, which is open Thursday to Sunday, which allows people to come to our U-pick flowers and also come check out these amazing mushrooms that our team grows, and getting them out here and going into the greenhouses allows them to kind of figure out what is a mushroom farm and what do we do here,” says Howard Berk, President of Ellijay Mushrooms.
What they’ll see is plenty of hard work and attention to detail, as growing three different types of mushrooms requires proper timing and constant attention each and every day of the year.
“The logs take about seven to fourteen days and then they start growing pins. After they start growing pins, they start growing fully every day. So, we harvest about three a day. So, every morning, we have to harvest. Once they’re fully open, you can tell that’s when we need to harvest. If they’re not fully open, we can leave them, wait until tomorrow, they’ll eventually grow big,” says Israel Bautista, Farm Manager at Ellijay Mushrooms.
Growing big is exactly what their client list has been doing over the past few years as they ship these mushrooms all over the region. However, despite their initial success, Ellijay Mushrooms is still looking to expand in a big way.
“We currently sell to Whole Foods in the south, Ingles, Michelin star restaurants. We sell to all the restaurants in Ellijay, Blue Ridge, all over the eastern seaboard. We’re trying to keep growing. We’re looking for more opportunities every day. For us to make this farm work, we need more volume. Currently, we grow five thousand pounds a week. We’d love to double that or even triple that,” says Berk.
That would not only help the business, but the community as a whole, as providing both good jobs and opportunity to those within the area is one of the main goals for this family run operation.
“It’s the thing that drives us, because if we didn’t have our community, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do, meaning that if we don’t have any employees, we couldn’t harvest mushrooms, and mushrooms don’t sleep so, we need everybody. So, every dollar spent goes right back into our community. Meaning that we can hire more young men and women in our community and give them opportunity to grow as well, like our mushrooms,” says Berk.
While it’s not easy starting up your own business or growing mushrooms, it is a decision Berk doesn’t regret one bit.
“We’ve had a lot of trial and error, a lot of ups and downs, a lot of scratching our head, but it’s been very rewarding to figure out all those challenges and to be able to feed people good, healthy, organic mushrooms. It might sound silly but, every day you go into the greenhouse and you see these little fellas just popping up, it still makes me happy every time I see one even though they don’t sleep and they have to be harvested even at three o’clock on a Sunday. It’s still very rewarding knowing that we’re growing great food for people to eat and consume,” says Berk.
By: Damon Jones