Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 8
A growing business
T
Dixon farm offers specialty mushrooms
by Paul Newton | pnewton@ruralmissouri.coop
he process repeats itself every week for Ron Selfors
and his son, Eric Robinson. It's part chemistry
project, part farming operation and part hard work.
But one thing is for sure: The earthy final product
is 100% delicious.
For more than three years Ron, Eric and the rest of
their team at Cold Creek Mushrooms have been raising,
harvesting and delivering both Italian and pink oyster
mushrooms at their farm outside of Dixon. The mushrooms
are grown year-round and are served in restaurants
from Rolla to St. Louis.
" The Italians are a good general purpose mushroom, "
says Ron. " They've got a nice mild flavor and keep their
body. Some restaurants serve them raw
in salad and others bake them. They
like that mellow taste. "
When the
father-andson
team
set out
to start
their
mushroom venture, they sought advice from mentors who
had been in the business of growing and marketing and
took in all the information they could find.
" We probably consumed 200 or 300 YouTube videos getting
ready for this, " Ron says.
The process to grow the mushrooms - which they
exclusively wholesale to restaurants - starts with a pneumatically
controlled bagger that Eric designed. It drops
preset amounts of both hardwood and soybean hull pellets
and water into a specialty bag.
The sealed bags then spend 24 hours in a sanitizer set
to just over 200 degrees to kill off any bacteria. " This part
of the process is so important, " Ron says. " If the sanitizers
fail, it might not just kill off that batch, but it could get the
whole chain and set us back weeks. "
" When we started this, we were only filling 32 bags per
week and using one sanitizer, " Eric says. " Now we're at
about 400 per week with five sanitizers. "
The cool bags are individually opened in the clean
room - where they wear masks and gloves to protect the
process - and inoculated with organic mushroom spawn
they buy from northern Wisconsin. The bags are moved to
a warm, dark incubation room for two weeks allowing the
spawn to take over the bag. They're moved to a temperature-
and climate-controlled harvesting room for one week.
" That's when we go in with our baskets and harvest the
mushrooms, " Ron says. " We bring them out and try and
clean them up as best we can so everything we sell to a
restaurant is eaten. Very little goes into the stockpot. "
The mushrooms are boxed and stored in a refrigerated
room until they're delivered the following day. While
Eric is the brains of the growing and harvesting operation
in Dixon, Ron, who claims to be retired, takes
care of marketing and sales to restaurants primarily
in cities along Interstate 44, including St. Louis.
" We get these mushrooms into restaurants within
a day of harvest; our delivery days are long, " Ron
says. " But, we'll pick out three or four restaurants
we've either touched before or are new
to us and talk to them about our mushrooms
when we're out. "
The best days for Ron are when he
meets with chefs or owners who have an
affinity for mushrooms. " We've stopped
at restaurants and just nibbled on
raw mushrooms for 30 minutes with
them before, " Ron says. " We were at
Roberto's Trattoria once and brought
our mushrooms in and they got taken into
Rural Missouri - March 2024
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Rural Missouri - March 2024
Contents
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - Cover1
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - Cover2
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - Contents
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 4
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 5
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 6
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 7
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 8
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 9
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 10
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 11
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 12
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 13
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 14
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Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 18
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 19
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 20
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 21
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Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 29
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 30
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Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 35
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Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 38
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Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 40
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 41
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 42
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 43
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 44
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 45
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Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 50
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 51
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 52
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 53
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - 54
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - Cover3
Rural Missouri - March 2024 - Cover4
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