What’s New at the Market
When: 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, June 2
Where: Sequim Civic Center Plaza, West Cedar Street
Featuring: The Morel Compass, local mushroom farm
The Morel Compass will be at the Sequim Farmers Market on Saturday, June 2, with locally grown oyster mushrooms, wild harvested morels, and kits for people to grow their own mushrooms at home.
Lily Athair, founder and mushroom grower, took some time to talk with me about her mushroom obsession and finding her niche as a farmer.
Lily grew up with a lot of organic farmers in her life, but it was only four years ago that she heard a TED talk with Paul Stamets about how mushrooms can save the world, which sparked her interest in the world of fungi. She was pregnant at the time, and started reading books about growing mushrooms.
When her daughter was 3 months old, Athair was inspired by a visit to an urban mushroom farm in Rochester, which incorporated public awareness and education into its mushroom growing operation.
“That’s when I realized I really wanted to be a farmer that could be in town, among the people, to make a bigger impact” Lily says.
In addition to reading about growing mushrooms, and learning to grow through her own experience, Athair has attended national convergences of mycologists, which consist of multiple days of networking and workshops about everything to do with mushrooms.
A year ago she started her own mushroom farm, The Morel Compass, in a greenhouse in Port Angeles. She primarily grows different varieties of oyster mushrooms with organic straw from Nash’s farm.
Once she inoculates the straw, it takes one month until the first flush of Oyster mushrooms are ready to harvest. Now her daughter’s favorite food is mushrooms, and the two love to prepare oyster mushrooms sautéed in butter.
The morel mushrooms she brings to market are wild harvested. She calls them “fire morels,” explaining that morels like to grow in places that are disturbed, by humans or by nature, so where there have been wildfires the morels will start to pop up.
Athair says with a smile in her voice, “The fun thing about morels is that they are hollow, so you can stuff them! A lot of people stuff them with crab … but I am more of a pesto and goat cheese kind of girl.”
When I ask her more about cooking with mushrooms, she suggests that mushrooms are a good meat substitute, with a meaty texture and a pretty high protein content.
She explains that mushrooms should not be eaten raw, as cooking is necessary to break down the cell walls that are made up of chitin.
Another unique mushroom fact she shared is that if you put mushrooms in the sun for half an hour, they absorb a significant amount of Vitamin B from the sunlight, increasing their nutrient content! Then they can be cooked and eaten.
Besides fueling Athair’s obsession with mushrooms, The Morel Compass is an avenue for her to educate people about mushrooms, and make mushrooms more accessible.
When I ask her about the name of her farm, she says, “I like the play on words; I like being funny. I also like the meaning behind it … to lead by example.”
You can find The Morel Compass at the Sequim Farmers Market on Saturdays at the Sequim Civic Center Plaza.
A special thanks to Bell & Davis Law, Brokers Group Real Estate, and First Federal Savings & Loan.
Elli Rose is the Sequim Farmers Market manager. Contact her at manager@sequimmarket.com or 360-582-6218, or see www.sequimmarket.com.
