Fungi Fun in Mercer County

Aug. 20—Princeton and the Grass Roots District grows every day with new businesses and residents finding their way to the area.

E.B. Fungi is Mercer Street's newest edition, and owners Joe Foye and Brenda Outsen have high hopes for Mercer County and what their business will bring to the area.

The store's purpose is to show people the importance and fun that growing gourmet mushrooms are, along with other mushroom aspects.

"This is pretty mush anything mushroom," said Outsen. "We are gourmet mushroom cultivators. We grow fresh mushrooms, we also have kits for people to go home and grown their own."

"It's really easy to do," she adds.

Both Outsen and Foye have been working with mushrooms for several years, and now, they want to use their store to not only peak interest in mushrooms and growing them, but also teach people how to do it and the benefits that growing them could bring.

"We have all of the supplies anyone wanting to start out would need from lab work to production to growth," said Outsen. "We teach classes, different ways to cultivate. For different kinds of mushroom, they have different specifics."

The store also has some mushroom merchandise such as t-shirts, stickers, necklaces, and more.

"We like to help out our friends in their businesses too because they support us, so our stickers are from a close friend that does them," said Foye.

Foye and Outsen said that they feel that their store will be a big contributor to the tourism and continued growth of Mercer County because of the massive community that is gourmet mushroom interest.

"There's so many people interested in mushrooms right now, and it's really exciting," said Outsen.

"We've been in talks about working on projects with people in the community and surrounding communities," added Foye. "We are very hopeful that we can put together a festival in the future."

The couple said that the interest in mushrooms is very large and just keeps growing, and they feel that with the mushroom community from all over the country that they already know will come to the area once they find out that it's here.

"Once people find out there's mushrooms here, they'll come," said Foye. "Everything grows here, and there are endless possibilities here."

He also added, "We're hoping to get these people that we know to come see beautiful Mercer County."

Foye and Outsen have high hopes for growing their own relationships within the community as well.

"There is a lot of interest in mushrooms, we can grow a never-ending food supply with them because they are very sustainable," said Foye.

Outsen added, "Even the waste product can be used for super soil. There's so many things we can do in the community. We want to work with local restaurants, food services, farmer's markets, and local farms."

Neither Foye nor Outsen are natives of Mercer County, but they said that they fell in love with it the minute they got here and that the mushrooms led them here.

Outsen first moved to Mercer County in 2014 from North Carolina and has been working with mushrooms for several years, while Foye did not move here until around a year ago after the couple had met and started working with the mushrooms together. Outsen credits the mushrooms for their meeting

"It's kind of how met," said Outsen. "Joe's been a cultivator for a little over a decade now, and I started out foraging."

Foye had started his first business which is where the name they have for the Mercer County location came from, and this business led them to meeting three years ago.

"He started his business, he had a business in Massachusetts, that's what E.B Fungi stands for, east Bridgewater," said Outsen. "He and I met, and I was just getting into cultivation, and he was just getting into foraging, so we kind of just found each other."

The couple moved around a lot from there in order to keep getting more knowledgable on mushrooms and the different aspects of them.

They moved to work on a farm in Maryland, which is where they decided they wanted to grow their own mushrooms and sell them.

"I already had a place here (Princeton), and we'd been traveling," aid Outsen. "We were looking for a place to produce mushrooms, and we met Lori McKinney, who convinced us to get a little shop here."

Outsen also added, "We never intended to have a shop, we just wanted to grow and sell mushrooms."

Foye's story on how he started getting interested in mushrooms was a bit different.

"I got into a really bad car accident that caused a back injury and a traumatic brain injury," he said.

Before the accident he was already looking to move from construction to IT work, but after the accident he found that he could not remember anything that he had learned about it through his several certifications.

"I went to the doctor, and they told me I had memory loss from the brain injury, which is when they started putting me on medications to fix it," said Foye.

He added, "When those didn't work, the doctor asked me if I would be open to trying natural remedies."

He told the doctor that he would do anything, and this was when the doctor suggested that he start eating the Lion's Mane mushroom which is known to help cognitive issues through some of its natural properties.

After a while of doing it, Foye could no longer find them at the organic grocery stores he had been getting them from.

"He asked me how they were working, and when I told him I was eating them but that I couldn't find them now, he said 'Well, why don't you jut grow them yourself,'" said Foye.

That's where it all started for him, and now, Foye feels mushrooms have not only helped his memory by eating them but also made his life better by coming into it.

"Now we're here," said Foye. "I've done every step of cultivating, and I thing the best part is watching them grow every day and teaching everyone else."

The couple is very passionate about mushrooms and what they feel the mushrooms can do for other people the same thing mushrooms did for them.

"We've watched people totally transform their lives through growing gourmet mushrooms, and it's quite amazing," said Outsen.

They are very excited for Mercer County to find out about mushrooms and to get involved with many other parts of the community.

"We are involved with the Peak of the Bloom, we did the Earth Day Festival, and we're looking forward to doing more events," said Outsen.

The couple also feels that West Virginia is a great place for them because there are some really good experts here.

"There are some really great mycologists here in West Virginia, so getting them together will definitely bring people to the area," said Outsen.

Foye also really loved Princeton and the Grass Roots District because the community is so supportive of each other.

"The other vendors, you'll see them walking down the street, and supporting all the other businesses, and with Cruise Nights, you'll see people just sitting out enjoying each others company," he said. "I just really love it here."

The couple is very hopeful for their business and what they feel it will bring to the area, and they cannot wait for their grand opening.

"We haven't had one yet, but the mushrooms will let us know when it's time for the grand opening," said Foye.

Outsen said that the changes Mercer Street has gone through in the last few years is also really going to contribute to the success of their business, and Foye added that they fit here because art and mushrooms go hand-in-hand.

"When I first moved down here, Mercer Street was not like it is now, and you see the Bee Company, Bucha, The Hound, Riff Raff, and it's just so great," said Outsen. "This community really fits what we're trying to do because everybody wants to work together, everybody wants to create."

She finished, "So many people want to do so much for the Grass Roots District and Mercer County, and we are really looking forward to being apart of that."

You can find E.B. Fungi at 747 Mercer Street in Princeton, and for more information on their hours, contact their Facebook account under the name E.B. Fungi.