Not Many Know About One of the Country’s Most Profitable Crops, Except This St. Francisville Farm

By Maddie Scott

The Advocate

Running one of Louisiana’s biggest mushroom farms is not for the weak.

Mushroom Maggie's Farm grows and sells up to 1,200 to 1,500 pounds of mushrooms every week. The St. Francisville-based business cultivates a variety of fungi, at least eight different kinds like lion’s mane, oyster, pink trumpet, shiitake and chestnut mushrooms.

At the helm of the operation is Maggie Long, business owner, and her husband, Cyrus Lester, operations manager.

“Maggie one day was like, ‘Start a farm with me,’” Lester said. “I was like, ‘We’re broke. We don’t have any money. We don’t have any land. What’re we going to farm?’”

The answer was mushrooms, a solution that came after the couple learned it’s one of the most profitable crops in the country that requires the least amount of start-up costs and land, Lester said.

So the couple got to work. But things quickly went south.

Bouncing back

It was 2017, and Long and Lester had been married for three months after a year of planning and another year of constructing their new farm. In the first week of official operations, a fire turned two years of preparation into a total loss.

“We were steaming our fruiting blocks with propane at the time, and one of the hoses busted as I was standing right next to it,” Lester said. “So, I had two, 5-foot-tall propane tanks and the valves just blew. The whole barn burnt down.”

Lester was immediately sent to the hospital with second- and third-degree burns all over his face and arms, totaling 70% of his skin.

The farm took another year to rebuild, making 2018 its first “real” year of operations, as Long puts it. Lester views the fire as “a blessing in disguise” because they were able to rebuild the farm even better and more efficiently this time.

“That, we know we’re really good at — bouncing back,” Long said.

There’s not much equipment made specifically for cultivating mushrooms, Lester said, so they had to approach building with a do-it-yourself mentality. The refrigerators came from school board auctions. The tables are recycled from dishwashing lines, and the shelves that hold the mushroom bags are made from metal that Lester welded together.

“We did it all manually and worked ourselves to death the first five years,” Lester said.

How it works

Now in 2026, long past the fire, the mushroom farmers have hit a rhythm.

Staff members slowly drove up the driveway to the farm property on a recent January morning. The sound of chickens squawked from the coop behind the 2,500-square-foot farmhouse.

One chicken, named Colonel, escaped the coop. Long and Lester let him hang out as employees whisked boxes of mushrooms from room to room. Sometimes the staff fed him bits of feed as they crossed paths.

This preparation, with or without Colonel, is what sells out mushrooms every week.

The life cycle of mushrooms begins in a mixture of sawdust, soybean flake and water. With every batch, the mixture is packaged into 600 bags, each about 10 pounds, and undergoes a steam sterilization process at 202 degrees so no other bacteria or fungi is present. After 24 hours, it cools down and they add mushroom spawn and bring it inside the lab room.

“The mycelium, which is all the white stuff you see here, is the actual fungus,” Long said. “The mushrooms are fruits of a fungus.”

And the mushrooms start to form once the entire bag turns white, and it’s moved to the fruiting room. Depending on the kind of mushroom, they’ll sit here anywhere from 10 days to two months.

“On Tuesdays, we cut all the blocks that are ready to go in the fruiting room,” Lester said. “Lion’s mane, they just get a slit in the bag. The oysters get a big X on the side right here.”

Here, the mushrooms grow out of the bag, protruding in a variety of colors and textures. Staff pick and trim the mushrooms twice a day, in the morning and afternoon.

From farm to plate

Much of the business revolves around selling to restaurants, mainly in the Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Lafayette and St. Tammany Parish areas. In Baton Rouge, eateries like Cocha, The Gregory, Zorba’s and Rocca Pizzeria receive regular shipments.

Executive chef at Rocca Pizzeria Braden Messinger purchases 15 pounds of mushrooms every week, something the restaurant has been doing since its opening in 2019. The variety mix usually includes up to five different types, including lion’s mane, grey oyster, chestnut and king trumpet mushrooms.

“After we break them down into small, bite-size pieces, we toss them lightly in extra virgin olive oil, we season them in salt and pepper, and we roast those in the oven pretty lightly for about five minutes at 350,” Messinger said.

The main dish that incorporates the fungi is the Mushroom Medley, a vegetarian white pie with fontal, mixed mushrooms, red onion and grana. The mushrooms are also available as an add-on for pizzas and sometimes they’ll appear in specials, he said.

The add-on is specifically listed as “Maggie’s Mushrooms” on the menu, which sometimes prompts new customers to ask what they are. Messinger said he enjoys telling the story of the business when customers inquire.

“Whenever the opportunity presents itself, we always opt for local and fresh as possible,” Messinger said.

Mushroom Maggie's Farm also sells its products to the public every Saturday morning at Downtown Baton Rouge's Red Stick Farmer’s Market. The booth display is eye-catching, with mushrooms of different colors and textures jetting out of bags.

There’s a fair share of regulars purchasing the mushrooms every week. Baton Rouge resident Thelma Miles visited the market on Saturday to make her usual rounds or purchases, including a stop at Long's booth.

Miles has been a regular customer for the past three years. Through cooking, she's experimented with all mushroom varieties, but her favorites are blue oyster and lion's mane. 

"Sometimes I grind them up and make ground meat, add some nuts to it, like walnuts," Miles said. "You can do all kinds of stuff. Just be creative with it, and it actually takes on whatever flavor, however you season."

Ever since her breast cancer journey, Miles has prioritized healthy eating and local ingredients. Starting chemotherapy meant she couldn't eat red meat anymore.

"I don't miss it," Miles said about red meat. "I can make my mushrooms taste however I want it. Lion's mane tastes like a steak."

One mushroom at a time

Mushroom Maggie's Farm also sells tinctures, giving the mushrooms a longer shelf life, Long said. Consumers can add one full dropper every day in any food or beverage.

Long noted that the body “can’t process and breakdown through the chitin cell wall” of the mushroom itself to get the full nutrients, which is why the tinctures are beneficial.

Lion’s mane (their bestselling tincture) reduces inflammation, boosts the immune system and can regrow myelin around the brain, which could help with neurological diseases, Long said.

Maggie Long & Cyrus Lester at Maggie's Mushrooms Farm on Wednesday, January 21, 2025.

Javier Gallegos

Right now, the couple sells the tinctures at pop-ups, mainly the Red Stick Farmers Market, but they hope to begin selling online. They also sell grow-it-yourself mushroom kits so people can have their own mini farm at home.

“It’s the connection there with the people and just trying to help people as best as we can,” Long said. “We want to make a difference.”