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OfflineAnnoA
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Pennsylvania town calls itself `The Mushroom Capital of the World'
    #5952113 - 08/10/06 09:53 PM (17 years, 5 months ago)

http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/nation/15232664.htm

Pennsylvania town calls itself `The Mushroom Capital of the World'

By Lisa Anderson
Chicago Tribune
(MCT)

KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. - If there is a global mecca for mycophiles, this is it.

Kennett Square, a lovely 19th Century town of quaint shops and Victorian homes set amid the farmland and forests of the Brandywine Valley, may seem a somewhat unlikely paradise for fungi fanatics.

Nevertheless, it proudly bills itself as "The Mushroom Capital of the World" and will host its 21st annual Mushroom Festival on Sept. 8 and 9. Pennsylvania leads the $908 million a year American cultivated mushroom industry - generating more than half of the total mushroom crop - and Kennett Square is at its heart.

"It started here and just mushroomed," said James Angelucci, smiling sheepishly at the one mushroom joke he allows himself. The general manager of Phillips Mushroom Farms, a three-generation firm that is the largest grower of specialty mushrooms in the country, Angelucci has spent 45 of his 57 years in the mushroom business and has two brothers in the same trade.

Mushrooming tends to run in families here and it's serious business, having built up and sustained this little Chester County town, about 30 minutes from Philadelphia, for more than a century.

The first cultivated mushrooms in the U.S. were grown in Kennett Square in 1896_trailing cultivation in China by about 2,500 years and France by about 300 years. Using mushroom spawn imported from Europe, William Swayne, a Quaker carnation grower, found a lucrative use for the wasted space under his greenhouse benches.

From its Quaker roots, the business spread to Italian families, as immigrants found an employment alternative to the waning stone quarries, Angelucci said. The newest growers are Mexicans, who are just beginning to become owners after years of providing the bulk of the mushroom labor in Kennett Square.

Strange and mysterious to many, mushrooms, particularly wild ones, exert a strong allure, spawning foraging clubs in every state and a plethora of Web sites for enthusiasts. Thomas Volk, an internationally prominent mycologist at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, has had 895,000 hits on his "Fungus of the Month" Web site - http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms(UNDERSCORE)fungi/fotm.html - since it began in 1997. "That's pretty good for a page without any pictures of naked people," he said.

Although sniffed at by wild fungi fanciers, cultivated mushrooms hold fascination for their own devoted fans.

None may be more devoted than Kathi Lafferty, who owns The Mushroom Cap, a shop where one can find everything from mushroom-shaped swizzle sticks to little bottles of Kennett Square Potpourri, composed of spent mushroom growing culture.

Part of a mushrooming family, Lafferty, 54, is the coordinator of the town's annual festival, which is expected to lure more than 115,000 visitors next month.

"Mushrooms are different from other vegetables in two ways. They don't contain chlorophyll, so we have to provide a food source. And mushrooms are like humans in that they take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide," said Angelucci, donning a sanitary cap and leading the way into the damp, perpetual dusk of a growing room on Phillips' sprawling complex just outside town.

Inside, a crop of Portabella mushrooms sprouted in 24 beds of cypress wood, stacked in tiers of six. Creamy heads of all sizes, from pencil points to plump saucers, poked above the dark, loamy surfaces. Portabella and Crimini, its immature version, are so-called "brown" types of the white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus, which is the major mushroom variety grown in the U.S. Others, such as oysters and shitakes, are considered specialty mushrooms.

While many wild mushrooms live off nutrients in rotting logs, their domesticated cousins feed off substrate. An exquisitely calibrated and pasteurized mix of sawdust, millet grain, wheat bran, cottonseed hulls, corncobs, straw, hay, horse and poultry manure, the substrate is seeded with the mushroom spawn, or spores, and covered with a casing of peat moss while the mushrooms germinate.

Until the advent of widespread commercial air-conditioning in the 1960s, mushrooms were grown only in the winter. It's now a year-round business but heavily dependent on energy to maintain the various temperatures, oxygen levels and air filtering needed during the growing cycle.

"They're more difficult to grow than orchids," said Angelucci. But, despite popular belief, mushrooms, while averse to bright light, do not only grow in caves or even in beds.

Compared to Europeans and Asians, Americans are not big mushroom enthusiasts but their fondness for fungi is growing. Per capita mushroom consumption in the U.S. grew from about 0.69 pounds in 1965 to 3.94 pounds in 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The greatest growth is in fresh mushrooms, which account for two-thirds of all consumption.

And that's good news for the U.S. industry as it fends off market incursions by China, said Bart Minor, president of the California-based Mushroom Council, a national group promoting the fresh mushroom industry.

China leads the global mushroom industry with 32 percent of production followed by the U.S. at 16 percent, said Minor.

So far, Chinese attempts to compete for the fresh mushroom market in the U.S. have been stymied by time and distance, he said. "Raspberries and blackberries are about the only things more perishable than a mushroom. To get a nice, juicy mushroom, it's got to be pretty local - at least on the same continent," Minor said.


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Offline76degrees
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Registered: 06/08/06
Posts: 350
Loc: Middle Earth
Last seen: 17 years, 4 months
Re: Pennsylvania town calls itself `The Mushroom Capital of the World' [Re: Anno]
    #5953882 - 08/11/06 01:38 PM (17 years, 5 months ago)

I'm proud to say Kennett is right down the road from me :-D


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The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.


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OfflineHix
Animal Mother
Male

Registered: 02/20/06
Posts: 299
Last seen: 16 years, 3 months
Re: Pennsylvania town calls itself `The Mushroom Capital of the World' [Re: 76degrees]
    #5953928 - 08/11/06 01:56 PM (17 years, 5 months ago)

sweet i live in pennsylvania!


*checks windows and listens to ring tone for tapping*

I'll be there


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Invisibledutchmushroom
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Registered: 08/02/06
Posts: 1,393
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Re: Pennsylvania town calls itself `The Mushroom Capital of the World' [Re: Hix]
    #5954090 - 08/11/06 02:55 PM (17 years, 5 months ago)

to bad they dont grow psilocybe


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"Comes a time when the blind man takes your hand says: don't you see? Gotta make it some how, on the dreams you still believe, Don't give it up, you've got an empty cup, only love can fill, only love can fill" < Grateful Dead!

The bus came by and I got on, and thats when it all began


GROWLIGHT KIT, 250w HPS Digital ballast, + Enhanced Spectrum bulb and Reflector Sale Or Trade!
     


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InvisibleLana
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Registered: 10/27/99
Posts: 3,109
Loc: www.MycoSupply.com
Re: Pennsylvania town calls itself `The Mushroom Capital of the World' [Re: dutchmushroom]
    #5968941 - 08/16/06 09:24 AM (17 years, 5 months ago)

The state of Pennsylvania produces 46% of all of the consumed mushrooms in the USA.  So if you live in the US, there's a 46% chance you've eaten mushrooms grown here in PA.

Myco Supply  is located in PA, and yes there are many growers. 

Its nice to read good news like this so close to home :smile:

Lana


--------------------
Myco Supply - Distributors of Mycological Products
http://www.MycoSupply.com

The Premiere Source for Mushroom Growing Supplies.
Visit us online or call us toll free


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Offlinewiggles
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Re: Pennsylvania town calls itself `The Mushroom Capital of the World' [Re: Lana]
    #5969137 - 08/16/06 11:01 AM (17 years, 5 months ago)

I grew up right outside brandywine. There's mush farms all over the place, and about 5 million Mexican immigrant workers who sleep at noon. I'm sadly not even kidding, or attempting to be racist... its pretty cool to see.


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You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when its waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye.
Hunter S. Thompson


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Invisiblemskip23
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Registered: 06/08/05
Posts: 1,522
Loc: Philly
Re: Pennsylvania town calls itself `The Mushroom Capital of the World' [Re: wiggles]
    #5969326 - 08/16/06 12:18 PM (17 years, 5 months ago)

That were I get all my mushie substrate from
grade A compost :glittershitz: They just give it away free
u should see the supermarkets around here they stay stocked with shrooms

The mushroom fest is coming up too


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url=https://files.shroomery.org/files/05-26/988356075-Picture-278.gif][/url


Edited by mskip23 (08/16/06 12:19 PM)


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