- [Don] And you leave it loose and rough.

You don't wanna pat it down.

(bright music) So, get it on there like that.

And it's not rocket science.

- And that's precisely Don Simoni's point.

As this Mushroom Man spreads topsoil over his growing bins, he loves sharing his passion for fungi.

- Well, you know, somebody needs to educate the public.

I mean, they can't stay ignorant all their time-- all their life.

So they call on you the Mushroom Man.

- Well, they call me the Mushroom Man.

Yes, they do.

But, you know, that's okay.

- Don is a mushroom farmer, marketer and educator.

His business is called Mushroom Adventures.

Since the mid-1990s, he's been selling home mushroom growing kits across the country.

The kits are prepared at his Northern California mushroom farm.

It's a pretty small operation here.

- It is.

We only have about four or five people at any one time working here.

Some of them are part-timers, some of them are volunteers.

And so, you know, we're very close to the entire process.

- How many of these will you ship out in a year, would you say?

- Well, we can ship about nine or 10,000 as our max.

- Nine or 10,000?

- The boxes are filled with inoculated composts in a bag of topsoil.

Donald and his crew have done the hard work.

Once the boxes are in the home, it takes about two to three weeks for the mushrooms to appear.

- People buy them for themselves.

There are people who just are curious about how mushrooms grow.

But we get a lot of these sold during the holiday season as presents, either for Christmas, birthday presents, Hanukkah presents.

Um, they're gonna spend the money and give a gift anyway.

Why not give them something that's so unusual that they probably have never had it before?

- That's a great idea.

- I know.

- You wrap it?

- Yes.

Wrap it up and they open it up.

- Merry Christmas.

- Yeah.

- Enjoy your mushrooms.

- And then you get mushrooms for three months afterwards.

I mean, how nice is that?

- Here's your box of dirt.

Not dirt.

(both laughing) - I know what you mean.

- Some people get a lump of coal.

- Yeah, some people get a lump of coal.

We give you a lump of compost.

(both laughing) (lively music) I've always been a farmer at heart.

I'll tell you a quick story.

When I was a boy, my father took me to a five-and-dime store and I saw these little packets of things on the shelf.

And I said, "What are those?"

And my father said, "Those are seeds."

And I said, "What are they for?"

And he goes, "Well, you put them in the ground and they'll grow you food."

I went, "No way.

That's like magic.

Can we get some?"

So we bought three packets and we took 'em home and we put 'em in the ground.

And sure enough, they sprouted after a couple of weeks.

And next thing you know, I had corn, and I had some beans, and I just was like, I was hooked.

We have two operations going on here.

We have the mushroom kit business, which we had far before we had our growing operation.

And now we have our growing operation where we grow oysters, shiitakes, and white buttons, portobellos and creminis year round, and we've been selling those at the farmer's markets for about the last five to seven years.

- The mushrooms are grown in shipping containers converted into temperature and moisture-controlled growing houses.

These are shiitakes.

- Shiitakes.

- Some of these are big.

- I know.

They can grow rather large.

Our strain that we use seems to grow quite a few big ones.

- These are good looking mushrooms, aren't they?

- They are, thank you.

And if you cook 'em like a portobella, they're absolutely fantastic.

This one here is actually fantastically perfect.

And actually, you don't cut it.

You just push it off the stem like that.

- Oh, just snap it right off.

- Look at that.

How beautiful.

- Whew.

Look at the underside of that right there.

- Right.

Then, now, sometimes we just pick 'em and take 'em in the warehouse and then we cut 'em.

But in this case, I can cut the stem off right now and show you how we do it, and then we put it in the box.

- And that's going to the farmer's market this weekend?

- That's going to the farmer's market this weekend.

- How much will you get for a mushroom like that?

- Oh, let's see.

- Good size.

- That's about a quarter pound.

That's about a $3 mushroom.

- $3 mushroom right there.

(Don laughs) That's what you like, right?

- That's what I like.

I like $3 mushrooms.

- What is it about the mushroom that, when you describe the taste of a mushroom, what do you tell folks?

- Well, I have to say, sometimes it's a challenge to describe a flavor.

For example, like the shiitake mushrooms, I tell people it has a rich, earthy taste.

And oyster mushrooms have a flavor similar to kind of chicken meat with the same texture.

It's a whole different flavor.

And portobellos and creminis, they have, it's kind of like a more mushroomy flavor than the white buttons.

The white buttons were probably the least flavored.

- Don's mushroom growing began as a hobby.

And 20 years later, it's a full-time farming and business operation.

It also turned Don Simoni into this fungis number one fun guy.

You sort of built a little mushroom empire back here, haven't you?

- I guess you could say that, yeah.

We're mushrooming.

(both laughing) The business is mushrooming.

- Oh, I'm gonna let that one slide, yeah?

- Oh, that's okay, that's fine.

(both laughing)