In a dark room lined with metal shelves on the Monterey Bay, droplets of water fall from the ceiling, pooling in shallow puddles on the concrete floor. On them sit hundreds of blocks—neat rectangles of sawdust and spores from which mushrooms pop like silent firecrackers.

It’s just one of 15 incubation rooms at Far West Fungi’s Moss Landing farm, where they produce more than 10,000 pounds of mushrooms every week for grocers, retailers, and 15 different farmers markets around the greater Bay Area.

In the U.S., even on the West Coast, Far West Fungi is something of an anomaly. The vast majority of the mushrooms grown here are cheap and easy to produce: white buttons, creminis, and portabellas. More specialized types—your shiitake, your tree oysters, your maitake—are almost entirely imported from Asia.

Far West Fungi's shop in the Ferry Building in SF(Courtesy of @farwestfungi)

But 40 years of practice and innovation has turned what began in 1983 as a small farm in San Francisco’s Hunters Point Shipyard into one of the best-known gourmet mushroom operations in the country. Today, the certified organic producers grow close to a dozen varieties, from lion’s mane to king trumpet. They grow more shiitake than anyone else in the state.

Even after several decades, Far West Fungi is a family operation. John and Toby Garrone, their four sons, and now many of their spouses and kids have a hand in the business. In addition to the Moss Landing homestead, there’s a second, smaller farm in San Martin and shops in the SF Ferry Building and Santa Cruz. Last spring they founded the Santa Cruz Mountain Mushroom Festival, which returns for its second run this weekend, May 3-4, at Roaring Camp Railroad in Felton.

Every mushroom variety produced at Far West Fungi starts with sawdust, massive dunes of red oak and cherry they purchase from a furniture manufacturer in Salinas. After two months of watering and rotating, the sawdust is formed into 18-inch-long blocks and sterilized. In their new on-site lab, they add a tablespoon of fungus spawn then place the blocks inside sealed, filtered plastic bags.

The blocks rest at “the perfect napping temperature (around 70 degrees),” says Far West CEO Ian Garrone, for about four weeks, allowing the organisms inside to branch out like spiderwebs. When ready, they’re moved into growing rooms, those cave-type spaces in which lion’s manes sprout like poofs of cauliflower and red tree oysters bloom like orchids.

Inside an incubation room at Far West Fungi's Moss Landing farm(Courtesy of @farwestfungi)

At any one time, says matriarch Toby, this farm has “thousands and thousands and thousands of incubating bags” and each mushroom has a distinct personality that requires its own special finessing. Maitakes are picky; they thrive in a highly controlled environment. Shiitakes are slow, taking around nine weeks to mature compared to only four weeks for oyster mushrooms and six weeks for king trumpets. Turkey tails, a previously wild-hunted variety they’ve recently started cultivating for use in tinctures and teas, need extra humidity. The learning curve has been steep.

Far West now produces nearly all of the specialized mushrooms consumed in the Bay Area, but their influence stretches beyond the region. The mushroom growers are also evangelists for the development of a strong domestic gourmet fungus industry. They mentor other U.S. growers and showcase some of the most advanced fungi-producing technology from Japan.

The Garrone family encourages hobbyists too, selling mini-farm grow kits in four flavors (shiitake, lion’s mane, pink oyster, and tree oyster) for $25 a pop. The shiitake are the most idiot-proof of the bunch, able to produce as many as three separate harvests totaling several pounds of mushrooms over a couple of months.

Some of the goods at Far West Fungi's Ferry Building shop(Courtesy of @farwestfungi)

Far West Fungi’s tireless efforts have singlehandedly turned gourmet mushrooms from rare luxuries into local, everyday staples. Ian Garrone expects that trend to continue.

“Mushrooms use ten percent as much water as animal agriculture,” he explains. “It’s likely that production will continue increasing as animal product costs spike and mushroom costs go down.”

This is especially true in places like South America and Africa where the taste for fungi is already growing. “All they need is space. They can use whatever they have for substrate, learn a little about sterilization, and they have a nutritious food source,” says Ian.

// Find Far West Fungi at more than a dozen farmers markets around the Bay Area, as well as 1 Ferry Bldg. (Embarcadero) and online at farwestfungi.com