Howell ‘mushroom lady’ fighting hunger with DIY fungi kits

COHOCTAH TWP. — A mushroom farmer near Howell is taking a bite out of hunger.

Erin Hamilton, of Cohoctah Township, is the founder of The Mushroom Conservatory. She sells do-it-yourself mushroom growing kits and educates interested enthusiasts.

“There are endless possibilities in health and food security,” she said. “I think we can make a dent in global hunger.”

About a year ago, The Mushroom Conservatory began working with Eagles Wings Montessori School in the Madagascar village of Ankadikely Ilafy.

Hamilton supplied the teachers with mushroom cultures so students can produce their own food with few resources.

She also works with Eco-Agric Uganda, a organization that works with rural farmers and beyond. In the past few months, hundreds of women and girls have learned how to grow mushrooms to feed their families and establish microbusinesses to sell mushrooms to others.

“I want to create more programs across Africa,” Hamilton said. “I’m working on creating a guide that covers different regions of Africa and locally available materials to grow mushrooms.”

More:Local woman discovers her passion for gourmet mushrooms

She’s also working with the University of Michigan’s Sustainable Living Experience. Last semester, she helped students organize a mushroom growing space in the basement of their dorm and continues to coach them.

“They have between 40-60 buckets going right now. They had a few successful harvests,” Hamilton said.

Growing up on a farm, Hamilton said she wouldn’t have guessed she’d become ‘the mushroom lady.’

Her kits contain cultures for growing a variety of oyster and lion’s mane mushrooms, and she plans to add turkey tails and reishi.

Hamilton originally created The Mushroom Conservatory to grow high-end gourmet mushrooms for private chefs and restaurants. She initially worked out of a warehouse in Ann Arbor and later moved her operations and family to a farm near Howell.

The kits began as “science kits” for the homeschool community. They’re now carried by nearly 300 retailers. Hamilton also sells individual kits through her website, themushroomconservatory.com, and hosts workshops.

“If you get one of the kits, you’ll need brown rice to get it started in, or add it to bucket of straw or coffee grounds,” she said.

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Each kit is enough for five five-gallon buckets, which can each produce four pounds of mushrooms. They can be harvested about three times.

— Contact reporter Jennifer Eberbach at jeberbach@livingstondaily.com.