Collar City Mushrooms open for business
LANSINGBURGH, N.Y. » Avery Stempel is showing Troy that he’s a fun guy with fungi. Collar City Mushrooms is open for business and ready to share mushroom goodness with the Capital Region.
“Mushrooms have been the past, mushrooms are the present, and mushrooms will be the future,” said Stempel, owner of Collar City Mushrooms, with a big smile. “There’s so many uses for them - they can be packing materials, they’re used as a replacement for leather, and they’re a great source of a variety of nutrients.”
At the store’s ribbon cutting on Thursday, Stempel and his team received welcome and support from city, county, and state officials. Stempel received citations from Mayor Patrick Madden and from representatives for Senator Daphne Jordan, Assemblyman Jake Ashby, and Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin.
“I think this is Troy’s first mushroom farm - well, at least the first intentional one,” Madden quipped. “Thank you for investing in Troy. I can’t wait to tell all my mushroom-loving friends about this.”
Inside Collar City Mushrooms is everything Stempel and his team needs to grow and sell a wide variety of mushrooms. The process begins in a sterile lab, where the mushrooms are started from tissue cultures. When they’re big enough, they’re incubated in bags of grain and sawdust. The sawdust simulates the mushrooms’ natural growing environment and the grains provide nutrients for them to grow.
After incubation, the mushrooms grow to maturity in fruiting chambers until it’s time to harvest them. When the store’s production cycle is in full swing, Stempel anticipates harvesting 200-300 pounds of mushrooms every week.
What’s a guy to do with that many mushrooms? Besides selling them to the public, Stempel has established relationships with
Capital Roots and Victory Gardens. Capital Roots will deliver as many pounds of mushrooms as they can get their hands on to food pantries, and Victory Gardens will take the nutrient-rich blocks of spent sawdust and use them to revitalize their garden soil. Stempel also hopes to be able to supply local restaurants and grocers.
Collar City Mushrooms is filled with mushroom paraphernalia, from woolcraft mushrooms to photographs and ceramics, and even a mushroom tarot deck. Decorating the walls and windows are colorful posters of the Dao de Mogu Warriors, characters based on mushroom varieties created by local artist Mike Lake. Each poster contains facts and nutritional information about the variety of mushroom represented.
Currently, Collar City Mushrooms is growing the following varieties of mushrooms:
-Blue, pink, white, and golden oysters
-Lion’s mane
-Hen of the woods
-King trumpets and black king trumpets
-Beech
-Pioppino
-Chestnut
-Shitake Stempel happily admits he’s been a mushroom guy his whole life.
“I grew up in the woods, and I’ve always been fascinated by mushrooms,” he said. “Walking through the woods, I would be fascinated by the splashes of color mushrooms created among the greens and browns of the trees. Americans are a little mycophobic, and I’m trying to break that and spread the ‘gospel of the mushroom.’ I’m excited to be in the Troy community, especially in Lansingburgh where there’s kind of a void of things to do.”
Stempel is looking forward to filling that void once pandemic conditions have improved and he’s able to expand the store into the upper and lower floors of the building. He’s got plans for poetry nights, mushroom talks, live music, artist exhibitions, and dining events with guest chefs.
Until then, Collar City Mushrooms is here to meet all your mushroom needs. The store is located at 333 Second Ave. and is open Wednesday-Sunday. For store hours and more information about all things mushrooms, visit https://collarcitymushrooms.com/ or follow on Facebook at www.facebook. com/collar.city.mushrooms.