Marvelous Chester
County Mushrooms
When you live in the boonies, you’ll latch on to anything
that puts your hometown on the map. My husband and I lived in the boonies of
Chester County, Pa., about five miles west of Kennett Square, for nearly 10
years. During that decade whenever we traveled and signed our names and locale in
B&B journals, hiking trail registries or event rosters, we’d always add the
tag line “mushroom capital of the world!” Without fail, we’d head off giggling
like a couple of kids who used silly fake names.
We’ve
since moved, but haven’t outgrown our love of mushrooms that inevitably took
root during our time in Chester County. After all, “mushroom capital of the
world” is no joke. The most recent census (2002) indicates Chester County
accounts for 81 percent of Pennsylvania mushroom farms, 67 percent of
Pennsylvania production, and 37 percent of total U.S. production. Ranking first
in mushroom production nationwide, Pennsylvania is a mushroom powerhouse and
the commodity is the state’s largest cash crop.
For
more than a century, Southeastern Pennsylvania has been the hub of mushroom
production. The year 1885 marks the beginning, when William Swayne, a
successful Kennett Square florist, maximized the space beneath his greenhouse
benches to grow mushrooms. Locals took notice as business became a commercial
success, and the industry in Kennett Square literally mushroomed.
To appreciate mushroom farming, it’s important to understand
how mushrooms are grown. Cultivated mushrooms are raised indoors in the dark,
and their lives begin in a laboratory. The lab inoculates sterile cereal grains
with miniscule spores, the natural seeds of a mushroom too tiny for growers to
handle. The inoculated grains are then incubated to produce spawn that can be
sown like seed.
Outdoors on the farm, compost is prepared using wheat or rye
straw, hay or crushed corn cobs, or manure-based compost is made of stable
bedding from local race tracks and horse stables. Inside the grow houses, compost
is pasteurized to kill pests. Stacked wooden trays hold the pasteurized compost
that’s then mixed with spawn and covered with peat moss. Temperature and humidity
are carefully controlled, and the first harvest takes about a month. Mushrooms
mature in intervals, so picking by hand is continuous for six to ten weeks,
after which the bed is emptied, the growing area is pasteurized again with
steam, and the process repeats for a new crop. Like all farming, growing
mushrooms is labor intensive.
Also like many farms, the business carries rich family
tradition. You won’t find factory mushroom farms in Chester County. Instead
you’ll discover mom-and-pop farms passed down to sons and daughters, nieces and
nephews. Third or fourth generation growers are commonplace and 86 percent of
the county’s mushroom businesses employ family.
To those who believe food energy comes not only in the form
of calories or soil health, but also from love and pride of growers and
handlers, this legacy of family may account for the wholly satisfying taste of
fresh mushrooms. Mushrooms are rich in umami, the fifth taste our tongues are
capable of detecting in addition to sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Mushrooms’ umami
gives dishes a savory, meaty quality with a full-bodied mouthfeel. Think portabella
burger.
Though mushrooms are often grouped with vegetables and
provide many of the same nutritional benefits, they are actually fungi. The
bulk of the fungus industry consists of the white button, but other mushrooms commonly
cultivated include crimini or baby bella, portabella, maitake,
shiitake, enoki, oyster and beech—each offering
a cornucopia of culinary possibilities.
No dish says Chester County mushrooms more than a bowl of
mushroom soup. A rich broth earthy in flavor and color, creamy and comforting
with bites of fresh ‘shrooms, it’s a soup that stands alone kicking crackers to
the curb.
“When I was growing up the staple at the Thanksgiving table
was always cream of mushrooms,” said Kathi Lafferty,
a Kennett Square-born native, about the origins of mushroom soup. “My
grandmother made a great cream of mushroom; it was a side dish, it wasn’t gravy
for your potatoes, and oh, they were excellent; they were so good. And so everything’s
based on that kind of recipe.”
Lafferty’s got the fungi credentials. She’s owner of The
Mushroom Cap, the Kennett Square store devoted to mushrooms and their history,
and married to a mushroom grower. Her husband Tom and his brothers, Phil and
Steve, operate the family mushroom business, Lafferty and Sons, which began in
1946 by the brothers’ father, Philip.
Lafferty’s interest in mushrooms and watching her hometown
of Kennett Square thrive led her to volunteer as coordinator for The Mushroom
Festival, now in its 23rd year. Voted one of the top ten festivals
in Pennsylvania and featured on the Food Network’s All American Festival show,
The Mushroom Festival has grown to host more than 100,000 fans enjoying unique
mushroom festivities and savory mushroom edibles.
With mushroom soup the center of the culinary stage and the
focus of an annual cook-off, the street festival also includes cooking demos,
farm tours and exhibits, a soup and wine fest, bobbing for mushrooms, live
music and over 160 food and novelty vendors. The reach of mushroom dishes extends
well beyond Lafferty’s grandmother’s cream of mushrooms to include all things
mushroom—portabella fries, maitake bites,
mushroom stuffed crab, pumpkin mushroom soup and the sell-out mushroom ice
cream.
Nonetheless, soup remains the attraction. Lafferty says she meets
lots of tourists in her shop all asking the same question: Which restaurant has
the best mushroom soup?
“People hear about how we’re the mushroom capital of the
world and when they come into town, they want to taste mushrooms, and they want
mushroom soup,” Lafferty says. “You can now walk into any restaurant in town and
get a bowl of mushroom soup, and that’s great!”
Always held the weekend after Labor Day, this year’s
festival runs Sept. 6–7. The festival
is organized by hard-working, fun-loving volunteers on a mission to “promote the
mushroom, educate consumers about the health benefits of mushrooms and to
promote tourism in Southern Chester County, all while financially supporting
local and regional charities through a grant process.”
Luckily, the nature of the mushroom business provides
year-round availability so you don’t have to wait until September’s festival to
celebrate the many delicious varieties. As for me and my husband who no longer reside
in the “mushroom capital of the world,” each meaty mushroom bite from the stove
or off the grill takes us back, giving way to the new catch phrase: “the fungus
is still among us!”
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