Chris Pacheco spends his days farming king oysters, blue oysters and golden oysters, but he is not an oyster farmer. He is a mushroom farmer.
In what looks like a big blue warehouse with several shipping containers out back, Pacheco, the owner of Seacoast Mushrooms, and his seven employees grow oyster mushrooms along with several other types of flavorful fungi at the company's new 12,000-square-foot Taugwonk Road mushroom farm.
Pacheco grew up planting trees for his family's apple orchard in Rhode Island, where he learned to hate farming in rocky New England soil. He got an engineering degree to get away from farming.
His time in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Hartford brought him to the area, and when he got out of the submarine service, he stayed in the area working in the corporate world. Fifteen years later, in 2015, the challenge of growing mushrooms brought him back to his roots. He created a business plan to connect with his community through food.
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