ALAMANCE COUNTY, N.C. — Agriculture is a big deal in North Carolina. And according to N.C. State University, food, fiber and forestry contribute to over 15% of the state's income and employment. Farmers grow a lot, from sweet potatoes and corn, to cotton and wheat. But one lesser-known product grown here is mushrooms.
- Haw River Mushrooms grows gourmet, edible mushrooms in Saxapahaw, N.C.
- The farm is run by husband and wife, Chester and Laura Stewart
- In addition to selling mushrooms, like lion's mane and oyster, they also sell prepared foods, like lion's mane crab cakes and oyster mushroom jerky
- Haw River Mushrooms can be found at multiple farmer's markets around the Triangle
Haw River Mushrooms in Saxapahaw grows a variety of mushrooms, like lion's mane, oyster and cinnamon cap.
It's run by husband and wife, Laura and Chester Stewart. The pair started selling produce at local markets, then delved into the world of fungi in 2012. Since then, they've also seen an increase of people interested in mushrooms.
"A lot of the things that I think are drawing people to mushrooms, about how they can play a role in healing our environment and remediating our soil, and they have such culinary diversity," said Laura Stewart. "We kind of took that journey and realized pretty quickly, we would like to specialize in mushroom growing.”
Now, one of the ways the Stewarts are diversifying is by coming up with creative ways to serve the fungi as prepared food.
"So the lion’s mane mushroom, culinarily it tastes a lot like crab meat," Stewart said. "So we are highlighting that by making a crab cake, but this actually doesn’t have any crab meat in it. We substitute all of that with a generous portion of lion's mane.”
They also make mushroom jerky by marinating and dehydrating oyster mushrooms.
"We have young kids so we thought about, what are some of the ways that you can increase consumption within modern lifestyle," she said.
Stewart says there are so many things you can do with different mushroom flavor profiles, and she is determined to introduce more people to these tasty toadstools.
"(We are) kind of using our little kitchen test runs to find ways to get the right texture, the right flavor for a soup product or a jerky product. It’s been fun (and) we feel like we have just scratched the surface of what we want to do," Stewart said.
Haw River Mushrooms sell their products at multiple farmer's markets in the Triangle and beyond.
