The cider business is booming in parts of Appalachia. In Virginia, 18 alcoholic cideries exist, and last year their sales jumped 200 percent. Industry analysts expect the cider boom to continue.
But here in West Virginia, the very first facility to brew hard cider in the state is celebrating its grand opening this weekend. On Saturday, Hawk Knob Cider and Mead in Lewisburg will be open to customers who want to sample a taste of hard cider or purchase some to take home.
Owners Josh Bennett and Will Lewis started making cider together as a hobby nine years ago when they were at West Virginia University. Roxy Todd traveled to the cidery this week to talk with them, and brought back this audio postcard:
Hawk Knob Cider and Mead is open this Saturday from 2:30-4:30. Customers can then purchase cider by the bottle or case to take home. The cidery is also open by appointment to those who call ahead. info@hawkknob.com. (334) 324-5114. 2245 Blue Sulphur Pike, Lewisburg, W.Va.
Appalachian culture is becoming pretty hip, says Mark Lynn Ferguson, the creator of a blog called The Revivalist: Word From the Appalachian South. He called it the Revivalist because he’s seeing a revival of interest in Appalachian culture – and he also wants to help introduce the joys of life in Appalachia to more people. “I think the cultural influence outside the mountains has never been bigger,” said Ferguson.
And a large part of the draw, he said, is the growing popularity of Appalachian heritage- including our food.
In the past few years, Ferguson said he’s noticed that more and more chefs across the country are starting to cook what they are calling Appalachian cuisine. “Yeah I think this is the next big area of growth. Chefs, whether they’re in Charleston or in Chicago are starting to discover our food traditions.”
Credit The Revivalist: Word From the Appalachian South
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So all this has led Mark to celebrate the Revivalist Blog’s five year anniversary with a special photo contest called “Appalachian Appetite” (Very similar to our own name for our occasional food segment, Appetite Appalachia). And dozens of people have submitted their photos of their favorite Appalachian food.
Credit Courtesy / The Revivalist: Word from the Appalachian South
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The Revivalist: Word from the Appalachian South
The grand prize winner of the Revivalist’s photo contest will be rewarded with a two-night getaway at the historic Mast Farm Inn in Valley Crucis, North Carolina. Just near the Pisgah National Forest, the inn’s restaurant serves North Carolina rainbow trout and grits from cornmeal that’s ground at a mill in South Carolina.
Following widespread public outcry, the convenience store chain called Sheetz has found a West Virginia bakery that can supply pepperoni rolls to all of its stores in West Virginia. Home Industry Bakery in Clarksburg has been selected as the bakery that will replace Abruzzinos and Rogers and Mazza for pepperoni rolls sales to Sheetz, beginning September 12th.
Updated July 30, 2015 at 5:10 p.m.
After intense public outcry, the convenience store Sheetz has apparently reversed its decision to end sales of a West Virginia bakery’s pepperoni rolls at its locations in the state.
In an interview Thursday morning with The Clarksburg Post, the convenience store’s director of brand strategy Ryan Sheetz confirmed that decision.
“West Virginia-based companies are going to provide West Virginia pepperoni rolls to all of our West Virginia Stores. That will remain unchanged. That is something we have heard loud and clear from our customers, and we couldn’t be happier to take that feedback to heart and execute upon it,” Sheetz told The Clarksburg Post.
Although Sheetz says their pepperoni rolls in West Virginia are currently supplied by three bakeries within the state, the Pennsylvania-based company says it’s their intention to reduce that to only one, according to a report from WBOY-TV.
Sheetz executives released this statement Thursday:
We want our customers to know that we listen to their feedback and truly take their opinions into consideration. Our goal is to ensure that pepperoni rolls made in West Virginia are in every Sheetz location in West Virginia. We are currently evaluating many potential West Virginia based partners to fulfill this need. These new partnerships will allow for a more consistent offer and ultimately a better customer experience. We thank our West Virginia customers for their honest feedback and their support during this evaluation process.
An employee of Roger’s and Mazza’s Bakery told West Virginia Public Broadcasting that the owner of the bakery received a text message Thursday morning saying the decision to cut their product from Sheetz’s stores had been reversed. She also confirmed that owners of the bakery were meeting with representatives of Sheetz Thursday to discuss the decision and would not be available for interviews with media until Thursday evening.
However, one delivery driver for Rogers and Mazza’s says he was rejected from completing his deliveries Thursday at three Sheetz locations.
Original Post from July 28, 2015 at 5:25 p.m.
In Mountaineer Country, pepperoni rolls are so celebrated, they might as well be added to the state seal. In 2013, pepperoni rolls beat out Arizona’s Chimichangas, Iowa’s Bacon, Oregon’s Pear Tart, South Carolina’s Shrimp and Grits and Georgia’s Peach Cobbler as the most delicious state food in the country, according to CQ Roll Call Taste of America competition.
So it’s not really a surprise that West Virginians are very upset to hear that one convenience store chain, called Sheetz, could be dropping its West Virginia made pepperoni rolls.
The news came as a shock to Rogers and Mazza’s, a Clarksburg bakery that sells to company.
Up until last Friday, the owners of Rogers and Mazza’s bakery were excited to see their business growing. The family owned bakery has roots in making pepperoni rolls that stretch back to the early 1960s.
“We started making pepperoni rolls back then, and we’ve grown to five states, and we currently are making about 20,000 pepperoni rolls a day.”
Dennis Mazza’s stepfather owns the bakery that was notified through an email from the Sheetz corporate office.
“Last Friday I logged on to my email right before the weekend, and there was an email from their corporate that said all bakeries, all direct store deliver bakeries, they will no longer need our services, they decided to go with a warehouse program and that another bakery would start delivering pepperoni rolls to their store,” said Mazza.
These warehouse said pepperoni rolls might come from a bakery in Pennsylvania. However, Sheetz–whose corporate headquarters are based in Pennsylvania–did not return a call from West Virginia Public Broadcasting to confirm that detail.
On social media, pepperoni roll aficionados have come down pretty hard against Sheetz for its decision. After the public outcry, Sheetz then invited Rogers and Mazza’s Bakery to a meeting this Thursday to discuss the future of the West Virginia pepperoni roll.
@sheetz, Please continue getting your pepperoni rolls from Clarksburg, West Virginia … and can you put a #Sheetz in Lewisburg please?
According to most sources, the Country Club bakery in Fairmont is credited with inventing pepperoni rolls around 1937. But many North Central West Virginians know the stories that their grandparents told them- that for years pepperoni rolls had been made by Italian coal miners’ wives, who sent pepperoni rolls with their husbands as they went to work for long hours, down into the mines.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article stated that the pepperoni roll became the state food in 2013. A House Concurrent Resolution in the state legislature was introduced that same year, but was never passed.
Shepherdstown is a little place with a lot of history. Harpers Ferry and the Antietam battlefield are literally down the road. The tiny downtown has Civil War era brick buildings filled with mom n’ pop restaurants and shops. But there’s a kind of counterculture side to the town, too.
Locals can be seen playing live music on the street with a cup of coffee or tea in hand – maybe even wearing tie-dye. And there’s a big demand for local, organic foods including a local favorite – a restaurant called Mellow Moods.
When you walk in to Mellow Moods, you might notice the old hardwood floor; dark and even crooked and uneven in some places.
There are chalkboards featuring food jokes, local artists have work hanging on the walls, and you can sit at a table or on a couch.
The smells of frying eggs, fresh, warm bread, vegetables, blended fruits, and different cheeses waft through the air mixing together.
Phil Mastrangelo is the owner and founder of Mellow Moods, which he opened in 2007. Mastrangelo grew up just outside of Shepherdstown on the Maryland side of the Potomac River.
He says he wanted to bring real, organic foods to people in a society stuffed to the gills with processed foods. He started by only serving vegetarian and vegan dishes, but eventually he began offering things like organic chicken and wild salmon.
“I didn’t really want to jump in where everybody else was doing, and everyone else’s menus have 90% meat, 10% vegetarian. I wanted to do 90% vegetarian, 10% meat, and it took off,” Mastrangelo said.
In summer, Mastrangelo gets most of his ingredients from local farmers. That’s how the Red Rice and Hemp Burger came to be – to support a local business.
“The Red Rice and Hemp Burger started with a friend’s shop that was opening up, a hemp clothing store,” Mastrangelo explained, “and we wanted to do a special for them to help promote them, and just fell in love with it. And we make our own barbeque sauce, and we grill onions off. We have this amazing ciabatta bread, and the Red Rice and Hemp Burger was our first vegetarian burger.”
The burger is a customer favorite, but Mastrangelo says one of his favorite dishes is a very Appalachian one; his ramp special once a year when they’re in season.
The menu changes from month to month, but it always has a taste of the season — and the region.
Appalachian foodies will be interested to hear that the forests in Appalachia could be an ideal environment for growing mushrooms on logs in your own backyard.
The catch? It’s labor intensive, and if you want to sell your mushrooms to the public, you’ll need to show proof that your mushrooms are edible.
Still there are a handful of people in Appalachia who have been growing shiitake mushrooms for decades.
Just outside the town of Milton West Virginia, Bob Maslowski owns a small forest, where he grows and collects wild mushrooms to eat.
His dogs run circles around us as we make our way up a hill under the shaded canopy of maple and oak trees.
“This is kind of a small scale agro forest. I have 140 acres here; it’s all woodland. We like to collect mushrooms. We collect about 21 different edible types of mushrooms here.”
Maslowski and his wife Susan have what is called a forest farm. Aside from mushrooms, they also harvest elderberries, raspberries, and wild onions called ramps from their forest.
“These are ramps. We grow ramps on this same hillside. These are all transplanted.”
This doesn’t look like a traditional farm with rows of crops. This is full of tall shadows from the trees, with birds chirping above our heads. It’s quite idyllic, and not a tractor in sight.
But sometimes you might hear the sound of Maslowski drilling holes into oak logs, on the edge of the forest. He uses the logs to grow shiitake mushrooms.
Maslowski orders shiitake spawn from Wisconsin. The plugs look like these little erasers from a pencil, and inside each one are tiny dormant mushrooms.
Maslowski then sticks these plugs into an oak log from his forest.
“These logs will last about 4,5, 6 years. And they’ll produce several spawns of shiitake each year.”
Then he leaves the shiitake logs on the ground in his forest.
Credit Keith Weller/ United States Department of Agriculture
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Shiitake Mushroom
“It’s close to the house so we can check them every day. And it’s on the north slope, in a wooded area. And you don’t want a log in the sun or they’ll dry out too much.”
Maslowski has been growing shiitake mushrooms for about two decades. This is all mostly a hobby for him and his wife. He’s a retired archeologist and she’s a potter. They also have a small business where they sell home brew equipment for craft beer and wine hobbyists. They don’t raise shiitakes for the money.
“Basically, when we have a really good spawn run, we’ll take 9-10 bags to the farmers market. And sell them for about $3 a bag. It’s about three ounces. But when we’re not going to the market, these are plenty to feed us with enough shiitake. We dry some and we freeze a lot.”
Bob and his wife Susan love to cook with shiitake mushrooms. They make Hungarian mushroom soup and shiitake pizza. With each mushroom harvest, they invent new recipes. They share their latest inspirations at dinner parties and potluck gatherings with friends who also grow and cook local shiitakes.
Credit Susan Maslawski
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Hungarian Mushroom Soup
Aside from a few customers at the farmers’ market, and other friends who also grow shiitakes, Maslowski says he doesn’t meet many people here who’ve ever been exposed to specialty mushrooms.
Maslowski used to teach an anthropology of food course at Marshall University- where he talked to his students about mushrooms.
“I had one guy from Kentucky, and this is graduate school, said he’s never had a mushroom before.”
However, there is one wild mushrooms that is popular here.
“Appalachians really love the morels. And they’ll pick them, you know, sometimes you can get a bushel of them in a good place. And they just deep fry them, and in Kentucky it’s called Dry Land Fish. Whereas you go into the expensive restaurants, and these chefs are buying them for $20, $30 $40 a pound. Around here, more and more of the chefs are buying them. But most of them come from California. One of the problems is you’re not allowed to sell wild mushrooms at the farmers’ markets. I’ve seen wild mushrooms for sale at the markets. Nobody really questions them.”
The Health Department doesn’t want people like Maslowski to sell wild mushrooms at farmers markets because there isn’t a way to inspect those mushrooms to make sure they are safe for human consumption. The reason he can sell cultivated shiitake and oyster mushrooms is because they are grown from spores. At the farmers’ market, he has to show proof that he bought the spores– and that his mushrooms didn’t grow wild in the forest.
Credit Luisfi/ Wikimedia Commons
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It can be difficult to sell wild mushrooms to restaurants, too. Under state law, chefs who want to use wild foraged mushrooms have to have a mushroom identification expert inspect every mushroom that is served to the public. But the law doesn’t specify what a wild mushroom expert is. The West Virginia Department of Health suggests that local restaurants should reach out to extension agents, and mycological societies to find experts who can help identify mushrooms in their restaurant.
Another problem for chefs who want to serve wild mushrooms is there just aren’t enough people selling them.
Maslowski collects morels on his own land – along with other wild mushrooms, like chanterelles – but he doesn’t sell those. They’re too precious. He only collects enough for him and his wife to eat.
His hope is to encourage more farmers to start growing shiitakes because he’d like to see the community of mushroom farmers continue to grow in West Virginia.
“What we were hoping by selling shiitake and doing demonstrations at farmers market, that we would get more local farmers into it, and so on. But the local farmers are very conservative.” By conservative, Maslowski means most farmers he meets aren’t interested in growing exotic, or different crops, like shiitake mushrooms.
But some people want to see more mushrooms farmed from the forest.
Brad Cochran, Extension Agent for Ag and Natural Resources at West Virginia State University Extension Service
Brad Cochran is an extension agent with West Virginia State University.
“There is a lot of demand, especially here in the Charleston, Huntington, Metro area, because there are so many up and coming restaurants and really cool chefs around town that are just dying to get ahold of some good locally grown mushrooms.”
Cochran is working to encourage more farmers to tap into growing shiitake mushrooms, which he says could be perfect for West Virginians who are looking to make a bit of extra cash.
“And if people aren’t considering it already maybe they should be. The growing areas that we have here in West Virginia are perfect. We’re right at about 75% forested, which is a perfect place to grow shiitake mushrooms on logs, is prime territory for mushrooms. ”
Forest farmers are generally folks who grow ramps, hazelnuts, maples syrup, and shiitake mushrooms as a hobby- not as an income. But some people would like to see more forest grown products sold at specialty food stores and at restaurants that serve local ingredients.
Extension agent Brad Cochran believes there’s a lot of potential to grow this industry in Appalachia. Cochran studied forestry in college, and he isn’t against timbering. But he believes that forests can grow lots of products, not only trees.
“So if a landowner is wanting to do a timber harvest, say in 15 years, to help send their kid to college, traditionally they would just wait 15 years for a timber harvest. If they look at mushroom production, in those 15 years, you can have hundreds of thousands of pounds of production that they can sell at the local market for $10-15 a pound. You start looking at that, and you might not even have to do that timber harvest.”
That vision for forest farming is shared by a small group of professors, farmers, and researchers who are scattered across the country. They wonder, if people can make a living off the forest by making maple syrup, couldn’t they do it by growing ginseng, ramps and mushrooms?
Cornell University in New York has a forest on their campus where they are experimenting with forest farming. I attended a forest farming conference there last fall.
Rodney Webb owns Salamander Springs farm in Madison County, North Carolina
Rodney Webb was attending the conference. Webb is a farmer from Madison County, North Carolina. He grows about 1,000 pounds of shiitake mushrooms each year.
“I originally got into growing shiitakes, my wife had cancer, about 17 years ago, Hodgkins Lymphoma, and and we started doing some alternative diet type things. And shiitake mushrooms were one of the things that were recommended for us. And she was supposed to have that twice a week. And we were buying dried shiitakes from Japan. If you’re buying them in small quantities, the price worked out to be, you know, $100 a pound.”
“So I started growing them, and I think they’re very beneficial. They’re high in protein, can get up to 18 percent protein, for shiitakes, so if you’re a non-meat eater they’re a good source of protein. I really want to get them out to people to help make a healthier society.”
Credit Kasey Jones/ Jonesborough Farmers Market
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Rondey Webb sells shiitake mushrooms at the Jonesborough Farmers Market in Tenn.
At this time, there isn’t a lot of research to support the cancer fighting power of shiitake mushrooms, At least there haven’t yet been enough studies done on humans.
Lino Stanchich is a licensed nutritionist and a macrobiotic health counselor who recommends eating shiitakes for their rich nutrient content. Stanchich was the one who suggested shiitakes to Rodney Webb’s wife 17 years ago. Stanchich was born in Croatia and Italy, and grew up eating wild mushrooms from the forest:
“The best mushrooms are the ones that grow in the forest or on logs, naturally. Another thing too is they have a lot of vitamins. They have a lot of vitamin B 2 B 3 B 6, B 4, zinc, and fibers. So it’s a food, and a medicine at the same time. It’s a very good investment in health.”
Extension agent Brad Cochran says there are more and more studies being done that show the health benefits for eating mushrooms.
“Some of the other things that we are starting to see in the research are that all of them have a lot of cholesterol lowering abilities. While it may not be any kind of percentage that it cuts out cholesterol medication, but it can potentially lower it to where you have a lower dosage. They’re very organically grown, so they’re honestly some of the healthiest things you can eat.”
Cochran says he first fell in love with shiitake mushrooms in forestry school, because they are cool to grow and because they taste delicious.
“You know it’s really really cool, and having the ability to grow them right here in West Virginia is really awesome.”
Cochran says that he’s tried dozens of shiitake recipes, but his favorite is the most basic: he sautés mushrooms in some butter with a little garlic.
He’ll use shiitakes from the grocery store, if he has to. But he says the dish is really the best when the mushrooms come from a local forest, or even his own back yard.
You can buy shiitake spawn to grow on your own logs on websites like Field and Forest. You can also contact a local mushroom expert. In West Virginia, Paul Goland teaches workshops about how to grow shiitake mushrooms: 304-358-2921.
You can buy shiitake mushrooms that are Appalachian grown at:
Appalachian foodies will be interested to hear that the forests in Appalachia could be an ideal environment for growing mushrooms on logs in your own backyard.
The catch? It’s labor intensive, and if you want to sell your mushrooms to the public, you’ll need to show proof that your mushrooms are edible. Still there are a handful of people in Appalachia who have been growing shiitake mushrooms for decades.
Just outside the town of Milton West Virginia, Bob Maslowski owns a small forest, where he grows and collects wild mushrooms to eat.
His dogs run circles around us as we make our way up a hill under the shaded canopy of maple and oak trees.
“This is kind of a small scale agro forest. I have 140 acres here; it’s all woodland. We like to collect mushrooms. We collect about 21 different edible types of mushrooms here.”
Maslowski and his wife Susan have what is called a forest farm. Aside from mushrooms, they also harvest elderberries, raspberries, and wild onions called ramps from their forest.
“These are ramps. We grow ramps on this same hillside. These are all transplanted.”
This doesn’t look like a traditional farm with rows of crops. This is full of tall shadows from the trees, with birds chirping above our heads. It’s quite idyllic, and not a tractor in sight.
But sometimes you might hear the sound of Maslowski drilling holes into oak logs, on the edge of the forest. He uses the logs to grow shiitake mushrooms.
Maslowski orders shiitake spawn from Wisconsin. The plugs look like these little erasers from a pencil, and inside each one are tiny dormant mushrooms.
Maslowski then sticks these plugs into an oak log from his forest.
“These logs will last about 4,5, 6 years. And they’ll produce several spawns of shiitake each year.” Then he leaves the shiitake logs on the ground in his forest.
Shiitake mushroom. Credit: Keith Weller/United States Department of Agriculture
“It’s close to the house so we can check them every day. And it’s on the north slope, in a wooded area. And you don’t want a log in the sun or they’ll dry out too much.”
Maslowski has been growing shiitake mushrooms for about two decades. This is all mostly a hobby for him and his wife. He’s a retired archeologist and she’s a potter. They also have a small business where they sell home brew equipment for craft beer and wine hobbyists. They don’t raise shiitakes for the money.
“Basically, when we have a really good spawn run, we’ll take 9-10 bags to the farmers market. And sell them for about $3 a bag. It’s about three ounces. But when we’re not going to the market, these are plenty to feed us with enough shiitake. We dry some and we freeze a lot.”
Bob and his wife Susan love to cook with shiitake mushrooms. They make Hungarian mushroom soup and shiitake pizza. With each mushroom harvest, they invent new recipes. They share their latest inspirations at dinner parties and potluck gatherings with friends who also grow and cook local shiitakes.
Mushroom soup. Credit: Susan Maslawski
Aside from a few customers at the farmers’ market, and other friends who also grow shiitakes, Maslowski says he doesn’t meet many people here who’ve ever been exposed to specialty mushrooms.
Maslowski used to teach an anthropology of food course at Marshall University – where he talked to his students about mushrooms.
“I had one guy from Kentucky, and this is graduate school, said he’s never had a mushroom before.”
However, there is one wild mushrooms that is popular here.
“Appalachians really love the morels. And they’ll pick them, you know, sometimes you can get a bushel of them in a good place. And they just deep fry them, and in Kentucky it’s called Dry Land Fish. Whereas you go into the expensive restaurants, and these chefs are buying them for $20, $30 $40 a pound. Around here, more and more of the chefs are buying them. But most of them come from California. One of the problems is you’re not allowed to sell wild mushrooms at the farmers’ markets. I’ve seen wild mushrooms for sale at the markets. Nobody really questions them.”
The Health Department doesn’t want people like Maslowski to sell wild mushrooms at farmers markets because there isn’t a way to inspect those mushrooms to make sure they are safe for human consumption. The reason he can sell cultivated shiitake and oyster mushrooms is because they are grown from spores. At the farmers’ market, he has to show proof that he bought the spores – and that his mushrooms didn’t grow wild in the forest.
Pizza with shitake mushrooms and lorocos. Credit: Luisfi/Wikimedia Commons
It can be difficult to sell wild mushrooms to restaurants, too. Under state law, chefs who want to use wild foraged mushrooms have to have a mushroom identification expert inspect every mushroom that is served to the public. But the law doesn’t specify what a wild mushroom expert is. The West Virginia Department of Health suggests that local restaurants should reach out to extension agents, and mycological societies to find experts who can help identify mushrooms in their restaurant.
Another problem for chefs who want to serve wild mushrooms is there just aren’t enough people selling them.
Maslowski collects morels on his own land – along with other wild mushrooms, like chanterelles – but he doesn’t sell those. They’re too precious. He only collects enough for him and his wife to eat.
His hope is to encourage more farmers to start growing shiitakes because he’d like to see the community of mushroom farmers continue to grow in West Virginia.
“What we were hoping by selling shiitake and doing demonstrations at farmers market, that we would get more local farmers into it, and so on. But the local farmers are very conservative.”
By conservative, Maslowski means most farmers he meets aren’t interested in growing exotic, or different crops, like shiitake mushrooms.
But some people want to see more mushrooms farmed from the forest.
Brad Cochran, Extension Agent for Ag and Natural Resources at West Virginia State University Extension Service
Brad Cochran is an extension agent with West Virginia State University.
“There is a lot of demand, especially here in the Charleston, Huntington, Metro area, because there are so many up and coming restaurants and really cool chefs around town that are just dying to get ahold of some good locally grown mushrooms.”
Cochran is working to encourage more farmers to tap into growing shiitake mushrooms, which he says could be perfect for West Virginians who are looking to make a bit of extra cash.
“And if people aren’t considering it already maybe they should be. The growing areas that we have here in West Virginia are perfect. We’re right at about 75% forested, which is a perfect place to grow shiitake mushrooms on logs, is prime territory for mushrooms.”
Forest farmers are generally folks who grow ramps, hazelnuts, maples syrup, and shiitake mushrooms as a hobby- not as an income. But some people would like to see more forest grown products sold at specialty food stores and at restaurants that serve local ingredients.
Extension agent Brad Cochran believes there’s a lot of potential to grow this industry in Appalachia. Cochran studied forestry in college, and he isn’t against timbering. But he believes that forests can grow lots of products, not only trees.
“So if a landowner is wanting to do a timber harvest, say in 15 years, to help send their kid to college, traditionally they would just wait 15 years for a timber harvest. If they look at mushroom production, in those 15 years, you can have hundreds of thousands of pounds of production that they can sell at the local market for $10-15 a pound. You start looking at that, and you might not even have to do that timber harvest.”
That vision for forest farming is shared by a small group of professors, farmers, and researchers who are scattered across the country. They wonder, if people can make a living off the forest by making maple syrup, couldn’t they do it by growing ginseng, ramps and mushrooms?
Cornell University in New York has a forest on their campus where they are experimenting with forest farming. I attended a forest farming conference there last fall.
Rodney Webb owns Salamander Springs farm in Madison County, North Carolina.
Rodney Webb was attending the conference. Webb is a farmer from Madison County, North Carolina. He grows about 1,000 pounds of shiitake mushrooms each year.
“I originally got into growing shiitakes, my wife had cancer, about 17 years ago, Hodgkins Lymphoma, and and we started doing some alternative diet type things. And shiitake mushrooms were one of the things that were recommended for us. And she was supposed to have that twice a week. And we were buying dried shiitakes from Japan. If you’re buying them in small quantities, the price worked out to be, you know, $100 a pound.”
“So I started growing them, and I think they’re very beneficial. They’re high in protein, can get up to 18 percent protein, for shiitakes, so if you’re a non-meat eater they’re a good source of protein. I really want to get them out to people to help make a healthier society.”
Rondey Webb sells shiitake mushrooms at the Jonesborough Farmers Market in Tenn. Credit: Kasey Jones/ Jonesborough Farmers Market
At this time, there isn’t a lot of research to support the cancer fighting power of shiitake mushrooms, At least there haven’t yet been enough studies done on humans.
Lino Stanchich is a licensed nutritionist and a macrobiotic health counselor who recommends eating shiitakes for their rich nutrient content. Stanchich was the one who suggested shiitakes to Rodney Webb’s wife 17 years ago. Stanchich was born in Croatia and Italy, and grew up eating wild mushrooms from the forest:
“The best mushrooms are the ones that grow in the forest or on logs, naturally. Another thing too is they have a lot of vitamins. They have a lot of vitamin B 2 B 3 B 6, B 4, zinc, and fibers. So it’s a food, and a medicine at the same time. It’s a very good investment in health.”
Extension agent Brad Cochran says there are more and more studies being done that show the health benefits for eating mushrooms.
“Some of the other things that we are starting to see in the research are that all of them have a lot of cholesterol lowering abilities. While it may not be any kind of percentage that it cuts out cholesterol medication, but it can potentially lower it to where you have a lower dosage. They’re very organically grown, so they’re honestly some of the healthiest things you can eat.”
Cochran says he first fell in love with shiitake mushrooms in forestry school, because they are cool to grow and because they taste delicious.
“You know it’s really really cool, and having the ability to grow them right here in West Virginia is really awesome.”
Cochran says that he’s tried dozens of shiitake recipes, but his favorite is the most basic: he sautés mushrooms in some butter with a little garlic.
He’ll use shiitakes from the grocery store, if he has to. But he says the dish is really the best when the mushrooms come from a local forest, or even his own back yard.
You can buy shiitake spawn to grow on your own logs on websites like Field and Forest. You can also contact a local mushroom expert. In West Virginia, Paul Goland teaches workshops about how to grow shiitake mushrooms: 304-358-2921.
You can buy shiitake mushrooms that are Appalachian grown at:
