Business mushrooms for Montana man

VALIER, Mont. — David “The Mushroom Man” Schaibley circled back to his boyhood for a business venture in his senior years.

Schaibley grew up on a dairy farm in northern Illinois. His father was seriously injured in the Korean War and his mother worked. As a consequence, he spent a lot of time with his grandparents, and, as soon as he could keep up, he trailed along with his grandfather into the forest hunting for mushrooms.

These days, Schaibley is at the helm of D.E.S. Mushrooms, a mushroom farm focusing on unusual, gourmet varieties, the Great Falls Tribune reported.

The mushrooms grow in straw-filled bags seeded with grain spawn. That’s grain covered with fuzzy white threads from which fruit the mushrooms. Instead of pasteurized straw, some mushroom growers use corn waste or spent coffee grounds.

After the straw blocks are spent, they can be used to recondition soil in a garden.

From one bag in his operation, the buds of a pink oyster mushroom had emerged. Another had yet to produce fruit after a month and may need another two weeks.

He looked into the darkest corner, where he’s experimenting with a wheat bag filled with straw, much larger than his usual growing system. It finally was bearing fruit, little pin-heads that would grow into mushrooms.

“My goodness, I have been waiting for these for a month,” he said.

Schaibley grows pearl, phoenix, pink, clamshell, Florida, blue and grey doves and shitake mushrooms. His favorite variety is the grey dove mushroom, a type of oyster mushroom, and customers say the pearls are the best for salads.

“They fry up the best and have the best flavor,” he said.

He chops his mushrooms, including the stems, and sautes them until they’re golden with butter, garlic, onion, salt, pepper and thyme. They’re great on pizza, steak, burgers or right out of the pan.

He’s even pitched them as a T-shirt logo for mushroom fanatics: “I love grey doves.”

“People are responding in numbers I never expected,” Schaibley said. “I can’t go fast enough.”

He’s sold out at the Great Falls Farmers Market every Saturday for the two years of his venture. He sells in Cut Bank, too, and a few customers have found his place behind the First Baptist Church in Valier.

Part of the job is education. People are curious about the varieties they’ve never heard of, and they wonder how to use them. Then they get excited to try the mushrooms — and come back the next Saturday for more.

“You’re feeding someone and making them happy,” he said. “I never anticipated the need or interest.”

People constantly ask him about morel mushrooms. That’s what he combed the forest for as a child. They’re delicious, but how to grow them is nature’s secret — and he’s OK with that.

The satisfaction of growing food for others harkens back to his dairy farming days, still plenty of work, but he doesn’t have to milk cows twice a day.

“There’s always something to do at Dave’s House of Mushrooms,” he said.

In the winter, he doesn’t have a market. He tried to dry the mushrooms, but some got old on him this winter. It was discouraging, so he stepped back. He wishes he’d kept at it hard so he’d be better able to meet demand this summer.

Five years ago, Schaibley saw mushrooms growing from a Folgers coffee can. He figured he could do it.

“I got too old to hunt, and my legs went to heck,” he said. “I made the mushrooms come to me instead.”

Growing the mushrooms is relaxing and enjoyable, he said, and doesn’t require him to do any heavy lifting or hard walking.

The actual process has proven much more complicated, but fascinating, too. He’s learned detailed sanitizing processes and how many contaminants are in the very air. He’s remodeling a trailer into a temperature-controlled and sanitized growing room.

Temperatures that are too warm stunt the mushrooms. Too dry doesn’t work either. Sometimes the mushrooms peak days before the market, so he eats them.

The first year, Schaibley ate mushrooms for every meal.

“I see mushrooms in my sleep,” he said.