Far North Fungi got its start in Anchorage in 2014, when Gabe DeGange built a 10-by-15-foot shed to grow mushrooms in his Airport Heights backyard. Inspired by a talk from mycologist Paul Stamets, DeGange and his business partner Allison Dunbar eventually tried and failed to scale up, retreated to the backyard, and eventually landed in Chugiak. There, they’re now finishing a new 5,000-square-foot production facility.
Along the way, DeGange has watched a rotating cast of hopefuls try their hand at the business. “We get people all the time who are like, ‘Oh, I really want to start up my own operation,’ and 90 percent of them never do,” he says. “The 10 percent that do, most of them rapidly realize that it’s just not an easy way to make a go of it.”
Because mushrooms take three to four months to mature, from spawn to harvest, growers get maybe two or three shots a year to refine their process. And unlike commercial fishing, which DeGange did before turning to mushrooms full time, a grower must handle every link in the chain personally: production, processing, delivery, sales. “We’re having to do all those jobs [ourselves],” he says. “It’s way more complicated.”
DeGange and Dunbar didn’t draw salaries from their business until last summer, nearly a decade after officially incorporating in January 2017. Today, Far North Fungi relies on farmers markets and direct retail, with wholesale as a long-term goal. DeGange describes the farm as still in “phase one,” as he continues to study market demand and builds toward a new production facility that can meet Good Agriculture Practices certification, the standard that Fred Meyer, Costco, and Walmart require and that currently locks the farm out of grocery shelves.
In the meantime, Far North Fungi has diversified into value-added products—mushroom jerky, powders, and medicinal tinctures—largely to avoid wasting mushrooms that don’t sell fresh within their narrow shelf life.
“The business model is awful,” DeGange admits. “You spend three months growing something, you have a week to sell it. That’s made it ‘innovate or die.’”
For all their differences, the three growers agree on one thing: mushroom farming in Alaska rewards patience over quick returns. Far North Fungi persisted through COVID-19, through failed scaling, and through gradual growth. Meares learned to diversify through making pasta and through community-supported agriculture to make Boreal Woods successful. And Ferrieri’s The Great Alaska Shroomery is still betting on wholesale potential, developing new products for Alaska’s restaurant and grocery markets.
The mushrooms, in other words, aren’t the hard part. Building a business sturdy enough to survive long enough to sell them—that’s where local growers keep testing different approaches to bringing mushrooms of all varieties to Alaska’s diners and cooks.
Dining and Cooking