- [Brandon] It's funny how it goes from just a hobby to this level of a company, a profession, a lifestyle.

- I feel like we said, okay.

And things just started going a hundred miles an hour.

- [Brandon] My name is Brandon Krystowski and I am the owner, operator, and grower for Erie Shore Seed and Spore.

- [Brandon] Erie Shore Seed and Spore is a small locally-owned and run gourmet mushroom and microgreen farm.

It's an urban farm.

We grow everything indoors, utilizing vertical space.

My wife got me a grow-your-own countertop kit, and I was totally hooked.

From then on, I had to research how they grow, what they were growing off of, why it was so easy to get them to grow.

Mushroom is actually the reproductive fruit of fungus.

This is a bag of substrate that has been mixed in with what's called grain spawn.

The substrate is hardwood saw dust that has been pressed into pellets.

And then it's supplemented with soybean hulls.

So I mix it 50-50 of each.

I hydrate it with about two liters of water.

Everything goes into these bags and then I drop in what's called grain spawn.

Grain spawn is millet--what you find in bird seed, and wheat berries.

And it has been inoculated with the fungus.

And then I will tumble everything together as evenly as I can throughout out the bag.

And it goes into the dark room.

Fungus likes to have darkness to be able to grow the right way.

In here, I've given them all the nutrients and stuff that they like to grow on.

I've given them plenty of water.

So the fungus starts to creep off of the green spawn.

It starts eating up all the nutrients, breaking down the, the sawdust, the soybean hulls, absorbing water, and it continues to grow.

So there's anywhere from two weeks to two months before they're ready to go into the fruiting room just depends on the strain of fungus and mushroom.

In here, is our fruiting room.

Right here is our golden oysters.

This is actually a third flush Italian oyster mushroom.

Nice chocolate brown.

So here is a Shiitake block.

And this block will give me probably about right around two pounds of Shiitake.

At first your immediate reaction is to go "Oh, I don't know if I can do that".

And then you learn to stop thinking that way and go "How could I do that?".

I haven't found anything yet that I haven't been able to figure out.

It's great to educate people on the health benefits of mushrooms, to just to get them to branch out and try different mushrooms and just building the camaraderie between individual people and other farmers who then come and try our products, or we go and buy their products.

And it really is just a big circle and community of people supporting one another, and it's fantastic.

It's a lot of fun.

Whether you're a mechanic or a farmer, you have pride in what you do.

And it's so rewarding and fulfilling when you see other people just walk by your product and go, "Wow".

It's worth it a little bit, especially when they buy it.

And then they come back and then they choose to be a repeat customer for you.

It's extremely rewarding.

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