Wendy Welch, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Violets Make Medicine, Munchies And Memories

Every spring, violets bloom across Appalachia, a carpet of purple, white and yellow. These unassuming flowers do everything from spruce up a cocktail to fight cancer. Here are a few of the ways herbalists use them for food and medicine.

This story originally aired in the April 14, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

Brandy McCann is a self-taught herbalist from Blacksburg, Virginia, who considers violets a personal gift. She was born in late April, when the flowers typically bloom.

It has always delighted McCann that she was born on Earth Day. When her mother went into the hospital, things were a bit dark and dreary, but when she emerged a week later, violets were in bloom.

“So that’s always been a very special thing to me, when I see the violets blooming, every spring around my birthday, I just feel like it’s such a gift from Mother Nature,” McCann says.

McCann enjoys reciprocating the gift of violets by using them to make presents for friends and family. In her sunny kitchen with a view of the flowers growing in her yard, she demonstrates how to make skin toner.

“I have a jar full of dried violets and I harvested them probably a couple of weeks ago. I let them air dry on a towel and put them in the jar,” McCann says. “And then I have here some jojoba oil, or you can use olive oil, any kind of carrier oil that’s good for the skin. And then I pour the oil and fill the jar, leaving just a tiny bit of headspace and then set a lid on it, and give her a good shake out every day.”

For a month or so, McCann says to keep the infused oil in a clean glass jar away from light, heat and dampness. Then strain out the plant material and keep the oil.

Brandy McCann makes skin toner from violets and jojoba oil. She has made gifts from violets for more than a decade.

*Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

That’s one fun project people may want to try with violets, but there are many uses for these flowers. Nica Fraser studied at the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine. She teaches her daughters herbalism as part of their homeschool curriculum. One of their projects is making violet lavender sugar.

Tastes differ, but Fraser suggests one to two tablespoons of culinary dried lavender combined with two cups of sugar is a good base. To this you can add a fourth- to a half-cup or so of dried violets — leaf and flower, not roots. Start with less and add as you go, then blend the mixture until smooth. Taste, then add anything you think it needs more of.

A blender can be used to make violet sugar. A mortar and pestle will also work.

*Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Learning with violets can be fun, and Fraser particularly likes that the violets add vitamins to the sugar all children love.

“I think per gram, you get about double the dose of vitamin C in a gram of a violet leaf than you do in a gram of an orange. They’re also rich in vitamin A, they’ve got great magnesium content, and they’ve even got calcium in them,” Fraser says.

Fraser’s youngest fills a flower bowl for processing back at the house. Fraser has taught her daughters to forage for spring violets, along with other edible flowers.

*Photo Credit: Nica Fraser*

That high vitamin content is also why Fraser likes to watch her daughters pick flowers during playtime — and consume them.

Of her oldest daughter, she says, “One of her favorite things to do is to know that she can just be walking outside playing, take a break, eat some flowers and keep going.”

Fraser learned to love foraging from her grandmother, who taught her as a child to hunt morels.

“She was actually the person who planted that seed in me, that you could find nourishment out in nature.”

It is a seed Fraser delights to see growing in her children as they forage on the family homestead in southeastern Ohio.

“I get to take my two daughters out into the woods, and I teach them what I know, and they are so very interested,” Fraser says. “They light up … they love taking this in and they retain it. They apply it, they ask questions, and it’s just really, really enjoyable to watch these little budding herbalists run around in the yard every day with their inquisitive minds.”

Those minds have retained a great deal of information, even at their tender ages. Fraser asks her kids whether they should eat violets that grow near poison ivy, and they come up with excellent information.

Violets are versatile and vibrant.

*Photo Credit: Nica Fraser*

Fraser’s daughters head toward a favorite foraging spot. They have been learning about plants during home school lessons with their mother.

*Photo Credit: Nica Fraser*

“We definitely don’t want to pick it because it will put the oils on from the poison ivy,” the girls reply, more or less in chorus. They add not to pick near busy roads where car exhaust would saturate the petals and leaves, or in a barnyard pasture, because — poop.

Keeping all those caveats in mind, violets are still one of the safest flowers for new foragers because they’re so easy to identify.

Dr. Beth Shuler and a patient at Powell Valley Animal Hospital. Shuler studied herbal medicine for animals as a supplement to her licensed veterinary practice.

*Photo Credit: Powell Valley Animal Hospital*

Dr. Beth Shuler, a veterinarian who studied at Purple Moon Herbs and Studies, loves violets.

“They just make me smile. I like that they’re gentle, they’re easy to find,” Shuler says. “It’s so safe and easy to use that you can put it in your cocktail or your salad, but at the same time it’s very strong and powerful enough to help cure cancer.”

Shuler owns Powell Valley Animal Hospital in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and often uses violets in her practice. She says they’re a good herb for breast care in dogs and people.

“Most of the dogs that we would use violets for are dealing with breast cancer, mammary cancer or mastitis,” Shuler says. “We would do a combination of oral treatment with a tincture.”

Violets are also a great cleanser for infected wounds. Shuler’s youngest dog, Sirrus, is about to get a special treat because Shuler wanted the flower power working inside of him. He had cut his foot on some ice, and it was a little bit swollen.

Or, as Shuler puts it, “he’s got mild lymphatic inflammation up in his axillary lymph node draining from that injured toe. So I’m placing some tincture, violet tincture in ethanol, on a corner of a piece of toast.”

Sirrus chows down. Shuler’s pleased by that, adding that giving dogs toast is not a common thing in her household, since bread is not good for dogs as part of a daily diet.

“But it does act as a very nice absorptive sponge for tinctures to go down easily. And less mess,”

Schuler explains that humans and dogs have multiple lymph nodes; think of them as internal trash cans trying to keep the garbage away. When people get sick, lymph nodes under our arms sometimes swell up and ache. But lymph nodes have no pump. Violets are excellent at breaking up and dispelling lymph from our bodies. Just another reason to love it, in Shuler’s opinion. But also a reason to treat it with respect and not eat too many of them at once.

“The violet is very powerful and easy to find. But again it is not a simple herb,” Shuler says.

In other words, don’t go eat a bunch of violets — or rub them on your dog’s feet — and expect either one of you to feel better right away. Shuler’s dog Sirrus got a few days of tincture toast.

Sirrus, the youngest of the Shuler/Tester family dogs, is happy to have eaten violet toast live on the radio. He had a mild cut that became inflamed, so Shuler treated him for a few days with violet tincture.

*Photo Credit: Brandon Tester*

“It’s not a one dose and done,” Shuler says. “These are built up in the body as repetitive use, it’s not an overnight fix.”

Literally safe enough for small children to swallow as a snack, violets can clean wounds, fight cancer or spruce up a gin and tonic. Violets are nothing if not versatile.

Violet gin fizzes are wonderful drinks. Shuler made two for drinking in her back garden, as a celebration of violet versatility.

*Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Dr. Beth Shuler and her husband Dr. Brandon Tester both took classes held on the North Carolina coast from Purple Moon Herbs and Studies. She is a veterinarian; he is a chiropractor.

*Photo Credit: Brandon Tester*

For a fun list of things to do with violets, check out Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine. Remember, never try a new unidentified plant or medicine without first consulting an expert.

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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.

The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.

Appalachian Artist Gets Her Mojo Back, Appalachian Woman Gets Her Unicorn Back

Here’s a story about a unicorn. Well, it’s really a story about an artist in Appalachia who lost her mojo. And it’s about the woman who helped her get her mojo back. With the help of the unicorn.

This story originally aired in the March 24, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

Once upon a time there was a girl named Ashley Nollen, who loved unicorns. In her own words, “I have been a unicorn fanatic since I was a little girl. My favorite movie in the world growing up was The Last Unicorn and I really feel like unicorns, for me, symbolize hope.”

Growing up in northern Virginia, Nollen went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival every year with her family, but they couldn’t afford to buy things there. So she made an internal vow.

“I’m going to grow up and become an adult and have adult money and spend it here.”

Her vow didn’t take long to fulfill. At age 17, Nollen landed her dream job: working in a bookstore. When her first paycheck arrived, she set it aside. Now she had cash, she knew exactly where she would spend it: at the renaissance festival.

Nollen circled the entire event twice before choosing a blue speckled mug with a braided handle. The man who sold her the mug was a jouster named (fittingly enough) Lance. Lance told Nollen to not stir inside the mug with a spoon and that it was dishwasher safe, but not to let it straddle a pin when going through the dishwasher.

Nollen loved the mug. “It had a little unicorn in it that was sitting in it looking up and it had crossed legs and cloven hoofs and such detailed hair in its mane. It was unique.”

She took good care of it, and the mug accompanied her to college a couple of years later. Her junior year, Nollen acquired a roommate, a nice guy who did dishes. One day he put the unicorn mug in the dishwasher. Over a pin.

“I didn’t know, or maybe I could have saved it,” Nollen recalled. “And when I pulled it out, the whole thing just kind of broke apart into pieces and flew across my kitchen.”

Her roommate promised to replace the mug next year. But when they got back to the festival, the shop was gone. Nollen could remember its location within the event, but not the name. She began asking vendors about “the place that sold mugs.” (If you’ve never been to a renaissance festival or faire, a lot of places sell mugs.)

Nollen, who enjoys role-playing games (RPG), had to laugh as she recalled that day. It became something of a live RPG.

“This turned into like a real-life quest where each little vendor or shop I went to … you would talk to them and they would each give you, like, a little piece of the story.”

Since Nollen didn’t know that Lance had only sold her the mug, not made it, she was actually asking the wrong question without being aware of that: did anyone know how she could find Lance? And people kept telling her he had gone north, or south, or been in a joust gone bad and died.

“There were several reports of his demise,” Nollen said.

Meanwhile, the person who had actually made Nollen’s mug was alive and well in Lancaster, Ohio. Her name was (and still is) Anj Campbell. Like Lance, she is not dead.

Campbell first took up making mugs, as a hobby in Dayton, Ohio, back in 1982.

“I was a quiet and well-behaved suburban housewife,” Campbell said. “And the city of Dayton Parks and Recreation Department had an absolutely wonderful fine art and crafts center with incredibly reasonable pricing. It was the Riverbend Art Center. It was in an old Quonset hut down on the river in downtown Dayton. And they offered pottery.”

She tried several classes, but when she got to pottery, it just clamped a hold of her and never let go.

“It took over my life,” Campbell said. Campbell fell in love with the sound of the wheel and the feel of the clay.

“When everything sings, and you get the clay centered, and it’s not fighting you, and you’re literally listening to the clay with your hands, you can do it with your eyes shut. And everything just flows together. And it’s a wonderful, fluid, almost meditative tactile experience. And it just makes my heart happy. When I hit that zone, when everything flows. It’s like a prayer. That is the point at which work is prayer. And everything you are and everything you have experienced ends up in that clay somehow, some way.”

While Campbell was falling in love with the clay, people were falling in love with Campbell’s work. She took third place in the Riverbend Art Show with a mask she made. People began noticing her talent. A local artist approached. Did Campbell want to join him selling mugs on the renaissance faire circuit? Campbell wanted to, but she knew her work would have to stand out in a literal crowded field.

“So I started including drinking companions. Yes, drinking companions, because everybody and his brother will make a mug. But mine come with someone you can talk to who will never ever ask you for money.”

The little unicorn that captured Nollen’s heart was part of a long parade of mythical mug-dwelling creatures.

Campbell began describing creatures she’d fashioned. “So there are dragons, some of whom are grumpy, some of whom are pleasant, some of whom are downright curious as to why you’re drinking their bathwater. There are unicorns there are Pegasus, or Pegasi, if that is the correct Greek plural, mermaids, fairies, fawns, anything that people can think of ends up in a mug. Someone else wanted a pig so she ended up getting a pig with wings. That way, you will always have someone to drink with you and you will never spend the morning alone.”

Assorted drinking companions.

*Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Faire-goers loved the whimsical practicality of Campbell’s work; her mugs flew off the shelves. Campbell’s husband pointed something out to her.

“He said I could make at least as much money making and selling pottery as I was making at a retail job. And he was right.”

Campbell began circuit riding to renaissance faires around the country. Occasionally, she got to put on medieval garb and an Irish accent to banter with customers, but usually she was backstage somewhere working the clay.

“It was a case of literally hauling the wheel and the kiln around with us so that when I was based somewhere, I would have the opportunity to work,” Campbell said.

Sales were great — until the 1990s recession hit. As sales slowly dried up, Campbell and her husband divorced, and she made another difficult decision.

“The pottery just wasn’t going to be making enough money to allow me to continue to depend on that as my sole income,” Campbell said. “So given a choice between continuing to live indoors and enjoy the immense pleasure of running water, and heat and light. I stopped pottering full-time and started working again.”

Nollen — the high school student who spent her own money to buy her own unicorn mug — didn’t know it, but she bought it around the last year Campbell sent her wares to the Maryland Renaissance Festival.

Campbell moved to Lancaster, Ohio — without husband or kiln. And soon pottery became part of her past life.

She worked in the photo lab at Walmart, worked in the pharmacy at Walmart, worked as an alcohol and substance abuse addictions counselor. Then she was offered her current position of leasing agent, at an apartment complex in Lancaster, Ohio.

“It seemed I never had enough time or energy simultaneously, to go and get the shop set up and make the trip out there to continue to try to work on the pottery,” Campbell said. “So up until a couple of years ago, I wasn’t pottering anymore. I was just working. But then something very strange happened.”

COVID-19 hit. The renaissance faire and festival community set up a Facebook page so artists could sell their creations online during the lockdowns. That’s how Nollen, now living in Virginia with a husband and two children, figured she could finally replace her beloved unicorn.

“All of a sudden I had access to vendors that were all across the country,” Nollen said. “I put out the request, I described the mug.”

Soon the owner of the shop where Campbell had sold her mugs was tagged. He gave Nollen Campbell’s name and told her she was on Facebook.

“I found two people with that name. One had a picture of a cat and I just figured that had to be her,” Nollen said.

Campbell recalled the Facebook message. “I got contacted out of the blue by an absolutely delightful young lady named Ashley Nollen, who explained to me that she had been trying for more than 10 years to find me.”

“And she just couldn’t believe that I’d been looking for her for a decade,” Nollen said.

Nollen’s search had made Campbell famous in the online festival and faire community. People who owned one of Campbell’s mugs were proudly posting photos and turning down offers doubling the original purchase price. People who didn’t have one were demanding details on how to place an order.

Nollen put it well. She said that Campbell “had to go on her own journey and her own quest.”

Campbell sat a few months with the news that someone had been looking for her that hard, that long, wanting what she had made that much. Her kiln was in a faraway outbuilding at a friend’s farm in rural New York, covered with dust and a tarp. She had no idea where her clay mojo was. But she liked Nollen. And she remembered the times the clay sang in her hands.

Campbell and her son made a winter’s journey together. “And I got my stuff from my friend who had been keeping everything stored in her barn,” Campbell said. They hauled the kiln several hundred miles to Lancaster, Ohio.

Campbell fired off a series of unicorn mugs. She also shaped dragons, cats, hedgehogs and myriad other drinking companions for the community clamoring for her work. But Campbell made sure the first unicorns went to the Nollen family.

The package arrived the day before the mail stopped running for Christmas. Campbell had included a few extra surprises. There were nine mugs in the package.

The bunny mug with its inspiration.

*Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Nollen had told Campbell about her children: her son Jerome’s passion for red, her daughter Cordelia’s favorite book Honey Bunny. Campbell sent a child-sized mug holding a cheerful waving bunny. Plus, a small unicorn mug (Cordelia was three at the time.). There were also two mugs for Jerome, one housing a red dragon, and a red mug housing a green dragon.

“It was fabulous. It was Christmas before Christmas,” Nollen said. “And in the nature of children everywhere, my son wanted my daughter’s unicorns and she wanted his dragons. Nothing unusual there.”

Nollen paused. “You know, just having her having her create again, it felt amazing to be part of that journey and part of her journey, too.” Then she grinned. “I mean, my baby’s gonna need a mug.”

Oberon, the son who joined Nollen’s family in 2023, will be getting his own mug soon. “We figure on starting him with a unicorn,” Nollen said. Nollen’s husband also suffered dragon envy. Originally, he told Nollen just to get mugs for the children, but when he saw the special personalized creations of the bunny, dragons and unicorns, he felt a little left out. This will be rectified with the next order, Nollen said.

Campbell and her kiln still live in Lancaster. Five days a week she works in an office helping people rent apartments, and on the sixth day, she creates things. Campbell no longer depends on pottery for her living, which means she can experiment with designs.

“I can drag out those notebooks from 40 years ago, when my husband would look at a sketch I’d come up with and say, ‘You can’t do that. Nah. You’ll never sell it for the price it will be worth, and it’ll take up too much of your time.’ Forget that,” Campbell said. “So, yes, I still have all those notebooks from 40 years ago. And yes, now I’m getting to play with those things.”

“Artists need community,” Nollen said. “They can get too much up in themselves. They need to be appreciated. [Campbell] didn’t realize how much her art could mean to someone else … And I’m just so glad she came back to it.”

Nollen is a creative writer and avid book reviewer. She keeps her new unicorn mug by her side when writing. “It gives me writing mojo … We have to appreciate each other, so we all keep making stuff.”

Ashley Nollen holding two of the mugs Anj Campbell sent.

*Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Potter Anj Campbell modeling an All Souls shawl.

*Photo Courtesy of Anj Campbell*

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Appalachian Mushroom Experts Welcome Sprouting Newbies

On an overcast but hot morning, a mushroom hunt began with a car ride to a secret spot near the home of West Virginia master naturalists Shawn Means and Amy McLaughlin. The pair run a boutique vacation rental called Lafayette Flats in Fayetteville, next to the New River Gorge Natural Park and Preserve.

This story originally aired in the Nov. 12, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.

On an overcast but hot morning, a mushroom hunt began with a car ride to a secret spot near the home of West Virginia master naturalists Shawn Means and Amy McLaughlin.

The pair run a boutique vacation rental called Lafayette Flats in Fayetteville, next to the New River Gorge Natural Park and Preserve.

They lead eco tours for people who stay in their flats, pointing out unique flora, fauna and fungi in the area.

Shawn Means and Amy McLaughlin are the West Virginia Master Naturalists who guided the mushroom hunt.

*Credit: Shawn Means*

Fungi are especially popular on the tours. “Mushrooms have been so hot lately,” McLaughlin said during the drive.

Means and McLaughlin were quick to name reasons why mushrooms have gained such popularity. They cited three: the pandemic got people interested in sourcing local foods; being outside during the pandemic was one of your few recreation options; and HBO Max created a hit series about a type of mushroom that takes over their host, creating a ‘shroom zombie.

Cordyceps, the fungi fictionalized as creating human zombies, really do exist. But they do not eat human brains, as the TV series shows them doing.

“There are mushrooms that are parasitic and they do have the same name, the genus as the ones in that show,” Means said. “But at this time, we do not believe that they will inhabit human bodies. But they do take over bugs.”

McLaughlin explained how cordyceps take over bugs.

“They get inside of the bugs into their nervous system. And they do take over them,” Mclaughlin said. “When the fungus is ready to produce the fruiting body, it comes up and kills the bug and comes up out of the bug.”

Teasing aside, the couple are eager to introduce this reporter to the joy of mushrooms. Two main paths are open to those interested in adding edible (and non-parasitic) mushrooms to their diet: farming or foraging. Misidentifying a fungus to use as food or medicine can be lethal, so foragers tend to hunt in packs until they’re experts. Experienced hunters like McLaughlin and Means are in hot demand.

Emerging from the car to search for mushrooms, Means quoted a proverb known to every mushroom enthusiast in America: “There are old mushroom hunters, and there are bold mushroom hunters. But there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.”

In other words, McLaughlin reiterated, it is a good idea to be super-careful when hunting fungi.

The couple led the way into a hilly forest. Birdsong filled the air. Dry leaves crackled underfoot — which was a bad sign, Means pointed out. Mushrooms proliferate after rainfall.

A mushroom, known officially as a fruiting body, is the smallest part of a larger living organism that needs a lot of water and can cover miles — all out of sight to the human eye.

“You’re in the woods and you see the trees and you see the mushrooms. And then if you just stop and think the vast majority of the fungus is underneath us, you know, and just think about that for a minute,” McLaughlin said. “Like the dark, the dark soil, the earth underneath us and that huge organism that’s under there that’s pushing all the fruiting bodies up. I think that’s fascinating to think about.”

There are also mushrooms that grow from wood rather than soil, but this hunt focused on chanterelles, which do grow in the ground. Unfortunately, the hunt did not go well. The forest floor proved dry and barren.

With a leap to a nearby ridge, Means attempted to find the fungi on a slope that might have encouraged water runoff, something the mushrooms would have liked. “I want to jump up here and see if I can see any,” Means said.

This also proved fruitless. “I don’t see any mushrooms at all,” Means called back before reappearing at the edge of the ledge, empty-handed.

Chanterelles would have been easy to spot, had any been around. Popular for teaching new foragers because of their bright yellow color and distinctive fluted edges that make them look like a tiny trumpet, they would be hard to mix up with any other mushroom — but not impossible.

McLaughlin described the most likely case of mistaken identity.

“There’s one called a, we affectionately call it a ‘jack-o’-lantern mushroom,’” McLauglin said. “Once you learn the difference, it doesn’t look anything like a chanterelle, it has very different characteristics. But it’s kind of the same color. So if you were a newbie, and you just were, you know, going through the woods and saw that color, it’s possible you could get excited. And those are poisonous. They’re not going to kill you, but they’re going to make you sick.”

The hunting party for chanterelles did prove successful after a few minutes, but it was still a disappointment.

Means pointed to an object on the forest floor and said in a sad tone, “One chanterelle, and it’s old.”

A single, ancient chanterelle on the forest floor proved to be the only mushroom found the day of the hunt.

*Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

After another fruitless half-hour, Means and McLaughlin drove back to their home, promising to cook up some mushrooms they foraged the day before in a “just in case” plan B.

In their well-appointed kitchen decorated with mushroom art, Means hauled a double handful of chanterelles from the fridge.

Shawn Means and Amy McLaughlin have a mushroom-themed kitchen.

*Credit: Shawn Means*

Means cooked down the little fluted trumpets in butter until they were lightly crispy, mixed in a small amount of honey, and served this over vanilla ice cream.

From skeptic to enthusiast, this reporter declared, “Mmm, that’s good.”

Chanterelle ice cream sundaes proved very tasty indeed, a combination of crunch, sweetness, and two smooth textures, one cold, one warm.

Mushroom hunting with experts such as Means and McLaughlin might also be described as a rare treat.

Shawn Means cooks up chanterelles. He fried them on high heat to get them crispy quickly, before removing them from the heat and adding a drizzle of honey.

*Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

However, if learning to identify the roughly 2,500 species that grow in central Appalachia feels daunting, those interested in fungi could try mushroom farming instead. It is safer, simpler and less subject to the vagaries of rainfall.

To home-grow mushrooms, you need a log or a cardboard box, and some spawn.

Ben Harder runs Den Hill Farms and Fungi in Christiansburg, Virginia. The farm offers workshops on cultivating fresh mushrooms, and business is booming. One of his most popular workshops teaches people to inoculate logs with spawn, also known as “mycelium.”

“We are mushroom farmers for eight years,” Harder said. They started with inoculating logs before moving into some specialized media like straw mixed with compost.

Inoculating a log means drilling a hole and pushing the mycelium into the wood. There it will feed and be fed in a symbiotic relationship, taking in carbohydrates from the log, then pushing out B vitamins and minerals like potassium through the fruiting body.

Harder vends at the Blacksburg farmers market, and it was there that he shared his personal entry story into mushroom farming.

“An Appalachian Trail thru hiker that happened to live in Blacksburg was coming through, and they were trying to sell these shiitake logs that they had inoculated,” Harder said. “Mushrooms were taking this waste product, a log, that is worth nothing but firewood, and making a high value retail product out of it. And that really blew my mind. You know, they’re making something out of nothing. And so it’s very exciting. And so he sold me the logs. That year, I killed ‘em because I left them inside of the barn and they dried out. But the next year, I started inoculating logs.”

That second round of inoculated logs went better, and Den Hill never looked back. In just a couple of years, they went from vending 100 percent fruits and vegetables to 40 percent produce and 60 percent fungi. Their bestseller home-growing method is not logs, though; it is a countertop kit.

“Doing the tabletop farm or the mushroom fruiting block on your counter, it’s really quite an experience,” Harder said. “Because it looks so beautiful. It’s like a living bouquet.”

Countertop box kits were everywhere during the pandemic, and they have stuck around. Harder sells bags of spawn to put in your own box. Walmart sells cardboard blocks full of specific spawn.

Stash the open box in a dark corner of your kitchen counter, keep it wet but not soaking, and in a couple of weeks, you have mushrooms.

An oyster mushroom kit in reporter Wendy Welch’s kitchen. Oysters bloomed three times before the box gave out.

*Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

“You can just kind of see it come and then when it hits prime, you get to just pluck off the mushrooms and eat them. And they even last a while in the fridge. You can keep them for a week or two,” Harder said. “So it’s a lot of fun and like a learning experience to see how mushrooms work.”

It is also educational. Den Hill sells the bulk of their fungal products to families with young kids, which pleases Harder immensely.

“It’s really been amazing, seeing the youth — especially like five to 12-year-olds — that are really showing interest in coming out of the woodwork,” Harder said.

Harder gets excited about the science projects he has helped kids with. Mushrooms tend to capture young imaginations for many reasons, not least because they capture environmental toxins.

“Oyster mushrooms can live on an oil spill and clean it and produce safe mushrooms to eat. It’s really incredible,” Harder said. “I have kids that show up and they want to do their fifth grade science project on building blocks or making insulation out of mycelium. And they need mycelium. And we’ve had other five year olds know all these different strains and want to grow them.”

Harder also delighted in vegans and experimental chefs growing tabletop farms for the joy of eating those fresh fruiting bodies, sometimes as an alternative to meat. Two of the most popular countertop mushrooms are lion’s mane, which tastes like lobster, and oyster, which tastes like mushrooms.

When it comes to a kitchen kit, the world is your oyster, Harder said.

“We have 24 different types of mushrooms in our culture library that we’re actively growing.”

The farming and foraging worlds are not mutually exclusive; most mycelium appreciation communities tend to be friendly with each other regardless of methodology. Harder thought this was in part because mushrooms are so hyper-local.

“I think mushrooms create community by having to be a decentralized system, where cultures and strains and mushroom fruiting bodies can be sold and traded locally, because of their lack of ship-ability, and kind of regional availability,” Harder said.

Kits will bring mushrooms safely and easily into your kitchen. For the thrill of a woodland hunt, hunt down a mushroom club. These are prolific in Appalachia.

Whether they are foraged or farmed, fungi can be fantastic fun.

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