Edible San Diego

By Vincent Rossi

San Diego’s only mushroom farm thrives on public demand and sustainable methods.

Photography by Chris Costa

North Broadway in Escondido doesn’t sound like the address of a mushroom farm. Those familiar with Broadway only as an artery in downtown Escondido might be surprised to know that if you head north just a few miles, you reach a point where the road narrows and begins winding among hills and open spaces. Tract houses give way to orchards and meadows.

But the surprises aren’t over. Amid these relatively rural surroundings, entering the driveway of Mountain Meadow Mushroom one is faced with a tightly packed compound of long, white, onestory buildings, interspersed with equally long and towering rows of baled haystacks. The haystacks, standing 20–25 feet high, are covered with a gray tarp that makes the stacks look like big airplane hangers.

You see a creek ambling through the property, and guys driving heavy equipment around.

What you don’t see are mushrooms.

“It’s not your typical field crop,” says Gary Crouch, co-owner of Mountain Meadow Mushroom.

The mushrooms are all in those long white buildings, which are divided up into 27 separate rooms.

Mushrooms grow in the dark, Crouch says, “because they don’t photosynthesize,” and therefore don’t need light.

In each of the 27 rooms at Mountain Meadow, wooden racks hold beds of compost going through various stages of a 63-day growing cycle. They go through about eight cycles per week, Crouch says.

Mountain Meadow employs between 70 and 80 workers on its 17-acre site, although Crouch says mushroom growers tend to speak of growing space in square feet rather than acreage.

“You plant about 750,000 square feet a year,” he says, “which yields seven pounds per square foot, or roughly 5–6 million pounds per year.”

That scale of production reflects the skyrocketing public demand for mushrooms. That demand has made mushroom growing a process that, in Crouch’s words, “goes on 24/7, 365 days a year.” He said he’d worked 10 hours this past Christmas day.

It’s an industry that has seen a great amount of consolidation, locally and across the country.

“We are the only local mushroom grower in San Diego County,” says Crouch, adding that he’s talking about what are considered the basic varieties, “white buttons, criminis and portobellos.” More exotic types of mushrooms, such as shiitakes, are still grown by firms like Golden Gourmet in San Marcos. Mountain Meadow doesn’t compete with that segment.

Crouch says his nearest competitor for basic mushrooms is in Ventura County. When his family started out in the business in the 1980s, there were five others in San Diego County, but “the others all went out of business.”

“Last year we lost six or seven mushroom farms across the U.S.,” he says. That’s out of a total of only 112 nationwide. Among those that went belly up were the two largest in the country.”

Why? “This is a very capital-intensive, and labor-intensive, process. It requires lots of cash to maintain.”

He focuses his marketing efforts. “Our niche is consistent. We supply all the specialty grocery stores,” says Crouch, mentioning Whole Foods and Jimbo’s as examples. He quickly adds that where he sells to chains, it’s only to local units of those chains. This is part of his commitment to encouraging consumption of fresh, locally grown produce.

“We believe you need to be within 50 miles of your market,” Crouch says. “We start our picking at 4 in the morning. By 8 o’clock we’ve already picked, packed and put it into a truck. By 10 or 11 that morning, they’ll be on the shelves.”

Crouch also estimated that he supplies mushrooms to 90% of the county’s restaurants, mostly through brokers. Some individual restaurant proprietors, such as the owners of Sea Rocket Bistro, Vincent’s and Tango, have paid visits and become buyers that way. A March 2008 blog entry by Sea Rocket co-owners Elena Rivellino and Dennis Stein features a video of Mountain Meadow co-owner Roberto Ramirez showing them around the farm and explaining the growing process.

Gary Crouch

“We believe you need to be within 50 miles of your market,” Crouch says. “We start our picking at 4 in the morning. By 8 o’clock we’ve already picked, packed and put it into a truck. By 10 or 11 that morning, they’ll be on the shelves.”

Mountain Meadow Mushroom is committed to farming sustainably. Those huge haystacks at the farm attest to that. The stacks are recycled stable bedding from Del Mar Race Track. “We divert over 8 tons of straw from Del Mar every year,” says Crouch.

Compost is treated with recycled water before use in the mushroom beds.

On a brief tour of the grounds, Crouch begins to describe a complex process.

“It’s still somewhat of an art. Not many people talk about it. You have to know the medium.” By medium he means the compost in which the mycelium spores will be planted. “The fruit of the mycelium is the mushroom,” he says. Besides the straw, the medium includes cottonseed meal, a byproduct of cotton growing, and grape pumice, made up of the stems and seeds left over from a grape crush.

The grape pumice helps produce sugar, Crouch says, which will generate heat once all the constituent elements have been mixed together. In another section of the farm, long rows of compost are giving off natural steam. Here the nutrients are being created that are necessary for mushroom growth.

“There is no manure,” he states emphatically, so emphatically he actually uses a more colloquial word for manure. Crouch and co-owner Ramirez are happy to refute the conventional view of how mushrooms are grown. Any traces of manure and urine that might be in the straw will be broken down in the natural heating stimulated by the composting process, which runs 20 days. Once the beds of compost have been placed in racks in the growing rooms, they will be heat pasteurized again before the mycelium is planted.

Crouch also pointed out oiled plastic sheeting hung at the entrances of each room. This is to catch insects, he said, to avoid using pesticides. The rest of the step-bystep process manipulates temperature to set up, stimulate, then end growth of the crop. New mushrooms can double in size every 24 hours under the right conditions, says Crouch. Mountain Meadow now gets six crops out of a room compared to four previously. An individual bed of mushrooms can be picked up to three times.

A lot of neighboring farmers, as well community gardeners and topsoil companies, come around to take some, says Crouch. “Tons of material that would go into landfills instead gets recycled.”

“We’re big supporters of Slow Food,” he said. “Any event that wants to showcase fresh local produce, we donate to.”

He also encourages people to come out and see his operation. Recent visitors included members of a sustainable agriculture class at San Diego City College.

Crouch is an Executive Board Member of the San Diego County Farm Bureau, representing mushroom growers. Mountain Meadow recently joined up with the bureau’s San Diego Grown 365 campaign. Growers will display the campaign logo on their products to help encourage consumers to find local farm products.

“By using that label you’re supporting local farms,” says Casey Anderson, Farm Bureau membership and marketing manager. “Gary has been very supportive of the campaign. He certainly recognizes the benefits of supporting local farmers.”

Vincent Rossi is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in newspapers (San Diego Union Tribune, San Jose Mercury News), online (San Diego News Network, Patch.com) and magazines (Westways, Edible San Diego). With his wife, Peggy, a professional genealogist, Vincent coowns StorySeekers, a publisher of family history, memoir and autobiographical books. His Italian- American heritage has spurred an appreciation of the interrelationship between culture and food

Mountain Meadow recently joined up with the bureau’s San Diego Grown 365 campaign. Growers will display the campaign logo on their products to help encourage consumers to find local farm products.

Pasta Primavera

Serves 6–8

Recipe courtesy Sea Rocket Bistro

½ onion, small dice

1 tomato, small dice

1 tablespoon minced garlic

1 red bell pepper, small dice

1 cup medium-diced squash/zucchini/ broccoli/snap peas

1 cup gilled and small-diced portobellos

1 cup mixed prepped mushrooms, bottoms cut off, mushrooms pulled apart—brown beech mushrooms, maitake and oyster mushrooms

2 pounds fresh fettucini pasta

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 ounce butter

2 cups white wine

2 cups cream

½ pound shredded gouda

4 leaves basil, chiffonade

2 teaspoon salt and pepper

Bring medium-sized pot of water to a boil. Separate pasta strands, put in pot of water. Let cook one minute. Drain in colander, coat with oil. In a large sauté pan, melt butter to cover surface of pan. Sauté onion, garlic and bell peppers for one minute. Add tomato, squash, zucchini, broccoli, snap peas and mushrooms. Add white wine; reduce by half. Add cream, bring up to a simmer, add pasta, and half of shredded gouda, salt and pepper. Gently toss pasta around, cover and let cook for one minute. Plate individually or in large bowl, garnish with rest of gouda and basil.

Open-Faced Mushroom Sandwich

Serves 4–6

Recipe courtesy Sea Rocket Bistro

1 loaf ciabatta, sliced in half longways

4 ounces chimichurri sauce

1 pound portobellos, degilled and smalldiced

1 ounce extra-virgin olive oil

½ pound brown beech mushrooms, bottoms cut off, individual mushrooms separated

½ pound maitake mushrooms, pulled apart

½ pound oyster mushrooms, bottoms cut off, mushrooms pulled apart

2 ripe tomatoes, small-diced

6 leaves basil, chiffonade 4 ounces goat cheese

1 tablespoon salt and pepper

Toast bread in oven at 425° until starting to brown. Remove and set aside on baking pan. In sauté pan, heat olive oil, sauté mushrooms for 5 minutes or until tender. Turn off heat. Toss with salt and pepper, tomatoes and basil. Evenly drizzle chimichurri on cut side of bread, liberally covering most of the surface. Spread out mushroom mixture on top. Crumble goat cheese on top. Bake in oven 5–10 minutes, until goat cheese is starting to brown. Cut into wedges and serve hot.