DAVID FALKOWSKI: The Mushroom Man David Falkowski's interest in mushrooms all started with an auspicious encounter with the back-to-the-land bible known as "The Humanure Handbook."
By Brian Halweil
"Something turned on in my head," said Mr. Falkowski. "Something about the cycling of nutrients and elements on this planet."
Shortly after, Mr. Falkowski, 27, a native of Bridgehampton, packed his bags for Olympia, Wash., to attend an immersion seminar with the fungi guru Paul Stamets. He returned a certified "professional mushroom cultivator" with plans to launch the first commercial mushroom operation on the East End.
Things are moving fast. Both Mr. Falkowski and his fiancee, Katherine Meyer, left their previous jobs to work full time on the business. Several restaurants, including Robert's in Water Mill, Bobby Van's in Bridgehampton, and Atlantica in Westhampton Beach, are mixing the fungi in with their dishes.
On a recent morning, when Mr. Falkowski delivered five pounds of blue oyster mushrooms to the Green Thumb Organic Market in Water Mill, a woman claimed half the box before he had even set it on the counter.
"The product is beautiful," he said, inspecting a thick, shiny white oyster mushroom. "You just don't see the same quality in the grocery store." The mushrooms sell for $25 a pound at the Green Thumb, compared with $30 or more at most gourmet stores. "Ours are fresher and organic," said Mr. Falkowski, who often delivers the mushrooms within an hour of harvest.
Everything begins on the microscopic level in the spawn laboratory that Mr. Falkowski built, a sterile, white-walled room about the size of a large closet where he stores and multiplies his mushroom spores. The room is equipped with a fan and filter that keeps out dust, insects, and airborne spores that might contaminate the seed stock.
"This is the heart of it all," said Mr. Falkowski, who still feels like Dr. Who in his time-traveling vehicle Targus, when he slips on his sterile shoes, scrubs his hands with an isopropyl-alcohol solution, and shuts the door.
"This is our advantage over commercial mushroom operations in Pennsylvania and elsewhere," he said. Growing premium mushrooms starts with high quality spores, which lose their vigor after a few generations. And they are expensive to buy. "The person who controls the spawn runs the company."
In a nutshell, Mr. Falkowski applies spores to a petri dish. Within a week, rootlike mycelia have radiated outward and colonized the dish. Using an X-acto knife, Mr. Falkowski transfers squares of the colonized medium into a glass jar of sterilized, organic rye grain - traces of fungicides can be lethal. The mycelia continue to grow and eventually make the glass jar look as if it's stuffed with cotton balls.
At this point, the operation moves outside to a big boiling vat, where Mr. Falkowski sterilizes organically grown straw. Once the straw is cooled, in go the inoculated grains. Then, Ms. Meyer unfurls a long plastic sack, holding the top open as Mr. Falkowski stuffs the straw in. "This is totally hands-on," he said. "No cheap labor. No machines."
The stuffed bags are tied at the top and hung from two-by-four rafters inside a climate-controlled greenhouse, where they resemble oversized sausages.
Mr. Falkowski punctures the bags with a four-pronged arrowhead, creating spaces for the fruit - that is, the mushrooms - to form. If the mix is right, each sack should hold all the moisture and nourishment the mycelia need to take over the straw and yield several harvests or "flushes."
"Really all we're doing is helping nature along," said Mr. Falkowski. "Fungi are magicians of the soil." The first flush comes after about one month, followed by the next two, 10 days later. "It's only a month from attempt to result," he said. "That's better than the farmer who needs to wait the whole season."
The couple has run into a few problems, of course. They recently had a catastrophe with gnats, which required them to sacrifice a large number of their growing columns and to hang yellow, sticky traps. "Mushroom growing is all about cleanliness," Mr. Falkowski said. "It's like farming in general. It's always going to be about something. This year is about the learning curve."
And they've progressed along the curve quickly. "Our yields from each sack have doubled since last month, and they're close to where we'd like them to be," a result of adding more inoculated grains to each sack and reducing the humidity in the greenhouse, Mr. Falkowski said. At 40 pounds a week, total supply still lags behind demand. "We need more sacks," Ms. Meyer added. "Some chefs have been asking for 50 pounds a week."
In addition to blue, white, and king oyster mushrooms grown on straw columns, the couple is raising shiitake, chicken of the woods, hen of the woods (also known as maitake), and lion's mane on logs. Eventually, Mr. Falkowski hopes to build a library of spores gathered from the many culinary mushrooms that grow wild on the East End.
Mr. Falkowski has cobbled together most of the mushroom-growing equipment himself, using salvaged wood and plastic, abandoned equipment, and frugal bidding on Ebay. Previously a landscaper, he uses the spent straw and wood chips from his mushroom growing as a nutrient rich compost on his collection of rare and exotic plants, including more than 30 types of edible berries.
"One hand feeds the other here," he said. "There's no such thing as waste." (Mr. Falkowski also sets up home mushroom beds for the gourmet gardener. There is more information at www.openmindedorganics.com.)
As a wild and exotic food, mushrooms are enjoying a renaissance in culinary circles. Personally, Mr. Falkowski favors shiitake - in omelettes, soups, salads, and stir-fries. And he raves about Ms. Meyer's "barbecued oysters" recipe: marinate oyster mushrooms in olive oil, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and minced garlic, and grill. "It's the best finger food you've ever had," Mr. Falkowski said.
Ms. Meyer, who is training to be a natural foods chefs at the Natural Gourmet culinary school in New York, envisions an even broader gastronomic role.
"In five years, we'd like to work with some of the wineries to arrange pairings," she said. "We can plan a new crop to be released with a wine. We'd like to be the one-stop shop for mushrooms on the East End."
Mr. Falkowski thinks that most shoppers underestimate the health benefits of mushrooms. "They are not just a culinary treat," he said. "Think of them as a new generation of over-the-counter medicines."
Lion's mane improves mental performance, he said. And shiitakes strengthen our immune systems. A long list of antibiotics and antiviral medicines have been derived from fungi, and a recent study found that oyster mushrooms help reduce bad cholesterol in the bloodstream.
This winter, the couple is planning to build a larger facility on some family land in Bridgehampton, where they will be able to harvest mushrooms year-round. Right now, Mr. Falkowski, who considers 2004 the "testing-the-water" year, is in no rush to flood the market.
He was recently checking the progress of an imminent crop, noting the tiny black-headed "pins" that will quickly expand into mature fruit. Adapting a common farm adage, he said, "I don't want to count my mushrooms before they pin."