I don’t really know how Cedar Roots Mushrooms came to be, it’s kind of been a lifelong passion that evolved into what you see here. I mean, everyone knows that mushrooms are the greatest tasting things in nature - I’ve known it since I was about 10 years old when my mom convinced me I was the greatest mushroom chef she’d ever met (which may or may not have been a ploy to get me as unpaid labour sauteeing mushrooms while she did the real work, but nevertheless).
I’ve been pretty fascinated with mushrooms since then, growing them as a hobby throughout the years and consuming pretty well every article, youtube video, or book I can find on the subject. Beyond the gourmet stuff, when you start thinking about how mycelium allows the forest to communicate in some sort of cooperative hyper system…whoa.
“Beyond the gourmet stuff, when you start thinking about how mycelium allows the forest to communicate in some sort of cooperative hyper system...whoa.”
(yes I put that in its own separate quote to make myself seem more profound than I actually am)
Anyways, over the past few years, this hobby has been ramping up into a bit of an obsession and it’s at the point where I want to share with my local community, as well as the broader community of those obsessed with mushrooms, like me.
At the local scale, our primary values are pretty simple: quality and availability. We want to make it as easy as possible for the Ottawa Valley to enjoy delicious mushrooms whenever they want.
On the cultivation side, we’re not exactly a huge farm here in Pembroke (it’s actually just a house on a main street), so in order to get to our production levels today, I’ve had to develop a cultivation system that allows for high and rapid production in a very small space. Being that it’s a system that we’ve been honing for quite a while and it’s something valuable that I’m proud of, we are going to be making our strains and techniques available to the broader community of those interested in mushroom cultivation.
Outside of mushrooms, my original career is in software development and it’s something that I’m still quite passionate about. When not tending to the mycelium or tinkering with some obscure software configs in repos that only I seem to care about, I can often (not) be found somewhere on a lake or in the woods...or getting stung in a field trying to assist my partner with her bee breeding program at atomicapiaries.ca (her bees are actually about as gentle as you can find, I just thought that phrasing was clever).
Finally, our name comes from my best friend and I’s camping adventures, where we always used to say that there was something magical about camping in a cedar forest. One night, probably over a couple of whiskeys, we discussed how we always wanted to remain rooted to that sort of life and it’s something I still carry. Hence, Cedar Roots Mushrooms
…Actually, one more thing. While mushrooms are the primary passion, I would say that we’re not ending here. The long term dream of Cedar Roots is an ecosystem where everything feeds each other, where the spent mushroom blocks turn into the compost that feeds the plants, which in turn provides the pollen for the bees which produce the honey that starts every mushroom that goes through our system. Mix in some animals and worms and such, and you’ve got something pretty cool. Stay tuned, would love to keep you posted.
“The long term dream of Cedar Roots is an ecosystem where everything feeds each other...”
(ah crap I did it again)