How Small Mushrooms Became Big Business In Arkansas

Matt Mershon with our content partner, KATV Ch. 7, reports on an impressive Shiitake mushroom farm nestled in the Ozarks. From Mershon’s report:

How does a small Arkansas town come to lay claim to one of – if not the biggest – log grown Shiitake mushroom farms in the country?

It starts with a match made in farmer heaven and what owner Carole Anne Rose calls her late husband’s “magic touch.”

The farm is nestled in the Ozark Mountains in between bluffs, making for the perfect setting for growing this particular breed of mushroom. What started as a small operation has grown into a large working farm that manages to ship nearly 1,500 pounds of Shiitake mushrooms every week.

The mushrooms are grown on logs and today the farm boasts more than 150,000 logs that rotate through a cycle to produce mushrooms ripe for picking almost every day.

Today, the farm ships mostly to local restaurants and farmers’ markets in Arkansas, but they also send their product to Austin, Texas, and Chicago, Illinois, for distribution at area Whole Foods stores.

It’s a complicated process that Rose and her late husband Curly Miller perfected for years.

The way they drill holes into the logs to insert mushroom spawn for growing is all proprietary information.

For an inside look at the organic growing operation, watch Mershon’s feature at this link.