The Mushroom Farmer Next Door

By Craig Kaminer / Photos by Carmen Troesser

For the last few years my signature meal that I cook on most Sunday nights is shiitake mushroom pasta in a light sauce made only with the mushrooms, olive oil, sea salt, cracked black pepper, grated parmesan cheese, and pasta water. If you like mushrooms and Italian food, this is the best of both worlds, with distinct flavors, a subtle creamy texture without cream, and simple ingredients from Italy and St. Louis, where the mushrooms are grown year-round – believe it or not – in the Central West End.

This love of mushrooms started when I lived in Italy and had fresh porcini and white truffles regularly. Since then, we begrudgingly settled for dried varieties from online retailers such as Urbani. Recently however, I discovered an amazing mushroom grower at the Tower Grove Farmers Market by the name Ozark Forest Mushroom Company, a 30+ year passion project of the Hellmuth family, perhaps better known as one of the founders of world-renowned architectural firm HOK (Hellmuth is the H).

In addition to selling at famer’s markets, Ozark Forest Mushrooms provides specialty foods to restaurants, grocery stores, coops, and porch pickups to individuals in the St. Louis area. They specialize in distributing unique mushroom varieties and wild edibles alongside the products they grow on their 2,000+ acre family farm in Timber, Missouri. But they are best known for their log-grown shiitake.

The family farm – called Timber Farms – dates back three generations and is in the Big Springs region of the southern Missouri Ozarks. This truly wild and beautiful area abounds with vast tracts of oak forest, clear springs, caves, and sparkling streams. The humid microclimate and oak/hickory forest along Sinking Creek, which runs through the Hellmuth’s farm, provides ideal conditions and substrates for cultivating shiitake mushrooms. By blending Ozark ingenuity, traditional Japanese techniques, evidence-based sustainability philosophies, and a lot of hard work, they have expanded the shiitake production to over 25,000 logs.

With the pandemic and a fleeting work force in southern Missouri, Henry Hellmuth, 30, who recently took over the business from his mom, focuses the majority of his growing in the Central West End. On the day I met with him for this story, I walked around the back of the family’s historic home on West Pine Boulevard to find two good-sized growing tents and a converted carriage house which includes commercial refrigeration, a sorting and packing area, and easy access for loading their delivery vans.

As I peeked into the tents a rush of humidity escaped and fogged my glasses unexpectedly. Henry led me into the tents where I found rows of mushroom packs (more on this later) stacked from floor to ceiling in various growth stages. It was a venerable Alice in Wonderland experience seeing, smelling, and tasting their prized shiitakes as well as the other mushrooms they grow in St. Louis.

In the Central West End location, all of the mushrooms are grown in (or better described as on) grow bags which are made of sawdust mixed with other things like soybean hulls, wheat bran, and lyme for the various nutrients.

To minimize the risk of power outages which would wipe out their crop, back-up generators run the air conditioning and humidifiers that are needed for the operation. “If there is a power outage, we can load everything from our fridges, run the generators and have multiple grow tents so we can quarantine the crop. Buying, selling, and growing mushrooms ourselves; getting stuff in from all over the place; and having multiple different fail-safe and backup options is part of the key to our success,” Henry said.

The principal crops in St. Louis are shiitakes, blue oyster, yellow oyster, chestnut, and lion’s mane. On the farm, they grow heirloom log shiitakes, which have a better flavor, a little bigger cap, and denser texture. “In addition to the six varieties of mushrooms we're producing, we buy from another local farmer who grows exclusively for us. We buy the hen of the woods and the king oysters, which require a bit different growing condition. Then we buy the beech mushrooms and any wild mushrooms that are in season from various farmers, plus portobello, cremini, and white button mushrooms. In total we are selling 10 to 15 mushroom varieties every week.”

In addition to the mushrooms they grow themselves, Ozark Forest Mushrooms distributes products from other mushroom farms and foragers. Every week shipments of creminis, button, and portobellos arrive from a large organic farm in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, wild mushrooms from the west coast and Europe arrive on Monday, and hen of the woods and king oysters arrive from another local Missouri farm on Thursday.

“My mom started growing mushrooms about 32 years ago,” Henry explained. “She was a biology teacher and worked at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. My dad was an architect and had a family farm where they ran cattle. Both were very interested in agriculture and had a big garden. My mom started experimenting growing mushrooms and realized that it was a really good climate. Her chef friends started buying our mushrooms when she grew too many for her own personal use. Before long she decided to start a business selling the mushrooms. Back in the day there were no local mushrooms. In fact, there weren't a lot of local farm businesses. She was at the forefront of the local food movement as we know it today.”

Now, it is a seven-day-per-week business for 52 weeks a year. Henry and his five associates in St. Louis pack mushroom orders for grocery stores and make deliveries. That can take up to three hours. At some point in the day they harvest all the mushrooms from the greenhouses in St. Louis. “We run to the airport every Monday to pick up mushrooms. On Thursdays, we do a special Columbia, Missouri, run and pick up the mushroom bags from another farm. Thursdays are also a heavy unloading and loading day in the afternoon. We’re growing mushrooms, picking mushrooms, and delivering mushrooms Monday through Friday. Saturday and Sunday we do farmer's markets and someone makes the three-hour run to the farm, takes over for the farm manager, and then brings back all the products to St. Louis.”
Ozark Forest Mushrooms is building a facility in the Fox Park neighborhood with scheduled completion in 2023. It will be the new home of the St. Louis operation and approximately three times larger than the current Central West End location.

According to Henry, “The mushroom industry is very regional. There are a lot of small mushroom growers because it's a quicker turnover business than most crops which are planted in the spring and harvested in the fall. Mushrooms grow quickly – often doubling in size every day – so you can grow and harvest after only 30 days and you can fruit it inside on a small scale. Also, the shelf life is very poor for mushrooms so the business lends itself to buying local and fresh on a small scale.”

After a difficult couple of years during COVID when the restaurant business dried up, Henry took over the family mushroom business after graduating from the University of Missouri - Columbia where he got a bachelor’s degree in plant science and agri-economics and then a Master’s degree from the University of California-Davis. “I helped my mom through the tough times and decided to take over a little bit after finishing my Master’s. After a year or so, I decided to stick around full time and try to grow the business. The goal is to double the staff, buy a new building to expand operations, and be able to take some time off. Each of us currently does every job, every day, but I hope with our growth each person will have a specific job, like a harvester, someone who specializes in marketing, someone who's the delivery driver, a general manager and then a full-time money person to deal with the books. We’ll all have distinct jobs and time off.”

“Mushrooms are definitely trendier than they've ever been,” Henry notes. “The average person doesn't know a lot about mushrooms; most think they grow out of the ground and that while you can eat some of them, others will kill you. One of the things we deal with is that they have a very short shelf life and you need to refrigerate them. At farmer’s markets I spread the word on how to care for them because people regularly purchase them, leave them in their car, and then stick them on the counter. They come back the next week and say they were rotten before they tried to eat them that night.”

He continued, “From harvest, they'll probably last about two weeks if you keep them refrigerated the whole time and you've picked them at the ideal maturity for most varieties. Typically, you want to eat them within a week of harvest. Once harvested, we refrigerate them instantly. We sell them no more than three days after harvest to the end consumer. There should be four to five days of peak quality, but they will last a little longer. They just get ugly but they're still totally edible, even though most people think they're rotten at that point.”

“Back in the day, we'd work more closely with chefs, but now a lot of chefs know how to work with mushrooms, especially professional chefs at high-end restaurants. We frequently drop off samples and try to build a relationship with new chefs. They understand that ordering from us is really easy. They text us an order and we quickly deliver what they need the same day.”

Many of St. Louis’ most acclaimed restaurateurs are regulars including Lou Rook at Annie Gunn’s and Gerard Craft. Restaurant customers include Lucky Accomplice, The Four Seasons, Little Fox, Edera, Fair Shares, Sidney Street Cafe, Juniper, Winslow's Table, Vicia, Olive & Oak, and Katie's Pizza. These restaurants spread the good word about Ozark Forest Mushrooms to the other chefs. “That's how most of our marketing works - just delivering a quality product every single week without fail for a long time,” laughed Henry.

As we wrapped up our lively chat about all things mushroom, Henry shared some of his personal favorites and recipes with me. “The log-grown shiitake that we're best known for are still probably my favorite. They have an amazing shelf life and an earthy flavor with a very distinct umami note. Nothing else tastes like a shiitake with that one little flavor note.” Henry shared a favorite mushroom stir fry recipe that they have made at a couple of festivals. “It's super simple; just corn oil, garlic, and ginger, stir-fried with shiitakes and you throw in some bok choy with a little soy sauce and maybe a dash of plum sauce for sweetness. Serve that over rice or noodles. I really like putting shiitakes in coconut curries too. They really add a lot of depth to cream sauces or a risotto - or just sauteed with butter and garlic - which is what most people do. Getting them golden brown and crispy and spreading them out in the pan is like a key to extra deliciousness.”

You can find Ozark Forest Mushrooms at Tower Grove Farmers Market on Saturdays like me, or order online at www.ozarkforest.com/order.