It’s a cold November day, but the 3,000 logs stacked inside Nicola Macpherson’s greenhouse are warm and dry. Plastic mesh is draped to form a roof above them, shielding the space from sunlight. Industrial fans suspended from the ceiling circulate warm air. In one corner of the room, a wood-burning furnace radiates heat as sprinklers positioned under the mesh material dampen the logs below. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about the woodpile at this point, but a visit to the farm nine months later reveals something new: Shiitake mushrooms have sprouted from their bark.
Nearly four decades ago, Macpherson, 64, and her husband, Daniel Hellmuth, 65, turned their mushroom-growing hobby into a small business. With the help of a handful of seasonal employees, the family—which now includes son Henry Hellmuth, 29—grows a range of varieties, from oysters to lion’s manes. From their home in the Central West End, they sell those mushrooms to home cooks and local restaurants.
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The Hellmuth family has owned the farm, in Timber, Missouri, since the 1950s. Originally Hellmuth and Macpherson raised cattle and grew timber, but Hellmuth changed focus after attending an alternative farming workshop in the mid-’80s. As Hellmuth tried his hand at farming mushrooms, Macpherson was inspired to turn the hobby into a business. The farm’s damp soil and timber rich land, they happily discovered, was ideal for cultivating edible fungi. In 1986, they launched Ozark Forest Mushrooms.
More than 60 varieties of mushrooms are grown on the farm, but shiitakes are the company’s best-known product. “Shiitakes grow on wood, and the oak—particularly the white oak common in the Ozarks—makes for good growing,” says Macpherson.
Macpherson and her team inoculate the logs with shiitake spawn using high-speed drills, then fill each hole with hot cheese wax. “The wax acts as a Band-Aid so [that the log] doesn’t dry out, and it keeps out contaminants,” she says. To stimulate growth, the logs are submerged in water for 24 hours, then placed beneath a humidity blanket that traps moisture and regulates temperature. This step is completed at the beginning of the process, before the logs are placed under the mesh tent for much of the growing process.
After inoculation, it takes a year for a log to sprout its first mushrooms. For the next two to five years, that log will produce mushrooms every nine months, depending on its diameter. It is the ancient Japanese method of filling oak logs with cheese wax to grow shiitakes that sets Macpherson’s operation apart. The shiitakes found in grocery stores are traditionally grown on sawdust blocks, accounting for a change in taste that Macpherson describes as “the difference between an indoor hydroponic tomato and a homegrown heirloom tomato.”
As a result, Ozark Forest Mushrooms gained a cult following among St. Louis chefs. Business was booming until Covid brought the restaurant business to a halt. “But out of disaster knocked opportunity,” Macpherson says. The company boosted its web presence and began offering porch pickup at their home to the public. They also became regulars at farmers’ markets.
The pivot proved a great success, says Macpherson. “We went from having to lay people off because restaurants closed to hiring more people because we couldn’t keep up with our online orders,” she says. “In a way, Covid got people back into the kitchen. Food supplies were terribly affected, and that made people realize the importance of local food.”
