{"id":45575,"date":"2021-07-27T16:20:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T22:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/farmers-market-leafcutter-farms-like-its-six-legged-namesake-grows-mushrooms\/"},"modified":"2021-07-27T22:20:00","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T22:20:00","slug":"farmers-market-leafcutter-farms-like-its-six-legged-namesake-grows-mushrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/farmers-market-leafcutter-farms-like-its-six-legged-namesake-grows-mushrooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmers Market: Leafcutter Farms, like its six-legged namesake, grows mushrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Victoria
Victoria Halligan and Justin Crouse of Leafcutter Farms sell mushrooms at the Durango Farmers Market. (Nick Gonzales\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Nick<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

If the number of mushroom vendors at the farmers market is any indication, there is a big market for gourmet mushrooms in Durango.<\/p>\n

Justin Crouse and Victoria Halligan started growing mushrooms about three years ago as a hobby in Laporte, outside Fort Collins, before it blossomed into a business.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw the demand for mushrooms and the gourmet mushroom market kind of growing in the United States,\u201d Crouse said. \u201cSo we figured we\u2019d give it a shot, and we turned it into an official business about two years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

They then moved the business to Durango at the end of February, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe focus on growing high-quality gourmet mushrooms, feeding local people high-quality food,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

These mushrooms include oysters, shiitakes, trumpets and reishi varieties. He said the mushroom farm hopes to get into a few local markets this fall, as well as the winter farmers market.<\/p>\n

On its website<\/a>, the farm also sells cultivation supplies \u2013 such as petri dishes, grain spawn and liquid cultures \u2013 for people to grow their own mushrooms at home.<\/p>\n

The name of Crouse and Halligan\u2019s farm comes from the leafcutter ants endemic to Central and South America and in the southern United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey go and defoliate trees, and they bring those leaves back to their nest, and then they cultivate mushrooms on those leaves \u2013 so they\u2019re like the original mushroom farmers,\u201d Crouse said. \u201cThey actually bring the leaves back, grow the mushrooms, and that\u2019s all they eat is the mushrooms. It\u2019s like a really sophisticated, cool system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The farm\u2019s mission is ultimately the same as its insectoid namesakes: to feed the surrounding community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just excited to be bringing these kinds of mushrooms to Southwestern Colorado and the Four Corners because they\u2019re an awesome nutritional food and they\u2019re delicious,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

ngonzales@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

farmers also sell cultivation supplies for would-be growers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[281,1934,438,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-45575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-agriculture","tag-farmers-market","tag-food","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45575"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=45575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}