We are a family, farm, homestead, and company who choose to do our part in the world and contribute to a healthy, resilient and sustainable community. We want you to know who we are, how and why we do what we do, and if it resonates, we would be honored and humbled to be your connection to mushroom medicine. We want you to know and trust your farmers and medicine makers.
Our History
In 2011 we packed up our family, left a 17-year career and embarked on a whole new journey. We settled down in a 155-year-old home with about two acres of land. It was a big field of grass at the time but over the years it has transformed into a working homestead to feed and sustain our family and community as well as building our mushroom cultivation facility.
We began the construction of our cultivation building with a traditional style Amish barn move. Our entire community (many of whom we had never met) came to help us pick up and physically move our two car garage to make room to build the new mushroom cultivation facility. About 70 community members came that day and we were able to lift and move the structure about 15 feet before deciding that it was not safe enough to fully move across the road. We had a cookout to celebrate the 15 feet and got to know the wonderful people in our community.
Our first cultivation facility was completed in 2015 and since then we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. We learned that mushrooms are incredibly particular and finicky living beings – perhaps more-so than our children! And we learned the skills of working together as a family team tending to the gardens, animals, mushrooms, customers, and each other. Someday our children will learn to appreciate their unique childhood.
Our journey to this point has brought with it a diverse set of skills — from our first careers developing novel drug compounds and clinical pilot plans in the pharmaceutical industry (read our full bios here), to supply chain management, and now to mushroom cultivation, facility design, construction and maintenance, to general management and HR, to regulatory and compliance, and scientific research. This unique history has brought us where we’re meant to be today: a medicinal mushroom company.
Through participation in the Vermont Farm and Forest Viability Program we fine-tuned our business and marketing approach to sharing our products with our community and beyond. This resulted in support from two local economic development lenders to help us purchase a new nearby property to expand our mushroom cultivation and product manufacturing capacity.
When we left behind the world we knew in 2011, I thought we would never make medicines again. Now we embrace mushrooms and herbs as the source of our community and family’s health and wellbeing. We couldn’t be more grateful for what the world has provided.
Peace,
Karen Wiseman
