Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Swinson.
Hi Chris, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I have always had an interest in mushrooms and thought that wild mushrooms were beautiful and curious. In 2012 I visited the Eastern Market in Detroit and purchased a mushroom grow kit from the mushroom vendor there.
I took it home and grew some oyster mushrooms in my kitchen and it was such an interesting and beautiful process that I just had to know more. I started reading about it and realized that anyone could grow mushrooms there are just some informational and technical requirements that can be a little bit daunting.
After a year or two of growing mushrooms as a hobby a friend and I begin to grow them together in a larger space in his basement. Pretty soon we had rented a warehouse and spent 3 years there trying to get our business established.
When it came time for the lease to end, we really hadn’t made much money or learned to grow more than a few types of mushrooms. However, some good friends of mine just so happened to purchase a property that had a number of commercial greenhouses on it around the same time.
So, in 2018 we moved part of our business to a new location and have flourished since then. Every year we add additional farmers’ markets and as of 2021, we were attending 17 markets per week in 12 different West Michigan and Lansing area locations.
We also sell to a number of stores, restaurants, and produce distributors. But we really enjoy selling directly to our customers at the farmers market and getting to have interactions about mushrooms and about what we do.
We just recently purchased our own home where we will be consolidating the business and also expanding to allow us to produce more and better-quality mushrooms.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
We didn’t have any outside funding when we started the business and it’s been a real struggle to bootstrap all of our financial needs in order to continue reinvesting and expanding.
Even though we have experienced fantastic growth from year to year It has been difficult to find outside funding or loans to help us get ahead.
As recently as 2019 I had to set up a GoFundMe when my car broke down right before our busy season started. But since then, things have really taken off and it’s been a lot easier to cover our basic needs and supplies.
I’ve gotten a lot of incredible help from a fantastic social network of friends and relatives who have contributed a lot of their time and effort to making our business a success.
Now there are four full-time employees here and over a half dozen people who just work farmers’ markets for us on the weekends.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Mycophile’s Garden?
We grow and sell around a dozen species of edible mushrooms and distribute them to farmers’ markets, stores, and restaurants across West Michigan.
As one of only a few mushroom farms in the state we are proud to offer mushrooms that are not currently being offered to the public by any other Michigan-based farms.
In addition to getting to share these unique and beautiful mushrooms with our customers, we also teach classes on mushroom cultivation, mushroom nutrition and health, and wild mushroom identification and foraging.
Mushrooms, unlike a lot of other produce, are uniquely fascinating to people and also full of unique nutritional compounds. Mushrooms still a lot of unique ecological niches and have a lot of potential in both medicine and ecological rehabilitation. We are extremely excited to get to work with them.
Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Given that we are an unusual type of business there hasn’t been a lot of opportunities for finding mentors, however, we have been able to mentor many other smaller mushroom farms.
Networking in general has been relatively easy because we’re involved in so many farmers’ markets. The farming community in Michigan is strong and there are many small and medium-sized produce farms here. We have gotten to establish relationships with dozens of them which has been both personally and professionally fulfilling and helpful.
Contact Info:
- Email: Info@Mycophile.org
- Website: www.Mycophile.org
- Instagram: Instagram.com/mycophiles_garden
- Facebook: Facebook.com/mycogarden
