Mushrooms are having a bit of a moment. West Virginia native Lucas Sieber, owner of Mon Valley Mushrooms in Morgantown, is thrilled the rest of us have finally taken notice. Sieber and his business partner, Jamie Brown, have spent the past three years cultivating a dream of providing locally grown mushrooms to customers around the Mon River Valley. Thanks to Sieber and Brown's relentless hard work and unwavering enthusiasm, regional interest in fresh-market mushrooms is growing. Local hot spots like the Morgantown and Bridgeport farmers markets are buzzing with excitement and a diversity of fungal varieties.
"I think that one of the most rewarding parts of this job is getting to expose people to these wonderful organisms," says Sieber, with a rack of newly emerging mushroom bags behind him. Brown agrees. "That's something we are really happy about—being able to bring mushrooms to this area and diversify the food that people have access to."
A native of Harrison County, Sieber grew up on a 70-acre farm outside the small town of Wyatt, spending most of his free time in the woods. Mushrooms were definitely present during the formative years he spent outside, but he never imagined himself becoming a mushroom farmer. Brown, a native of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, a small town southeast of Pittsburgh, recalls gardening and foraging morels from an early age. "Foraging was the beginning," she says with a smile. Together, Brown and Sieber are now among just a handful of commercial mushroom producers in the Mountain State who are raising both awareness and excitement for fungi, one farmers market at a time.
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