Meet the Farmer, Andrew Johnson | Florida Shroom King

Where it started

It started young. As a teenager I got serious about diet and nutrition, the plain idea that you are what you eat. What you put in your body has a lot to say about how your mind and your body feel. I spent over three years eating vegan back then, with mushrooms as my main source of protein, and I made the case to anyone who'd listen that people should eat more of them.

The first spark

In my early twenties I started reading about the benefits of mushrooms, and I went looking for oyster mushrooms. I found some, small white ones, at a supermarket, of all places. I took them home and cooked them, and they had the best bacon-like texture I'd had up to that point. I went back for more and they were gone. I never saw them there again for years. That stuck with me: here was something this good, and this good for you, and it was nowhere to be found.

All in

I started looking into growing mushrooms myself. A mushroom-farming friend had given me two real tips before I ever got started, and that was enough to get going. It took me a few years to get the ball rolling, about five, but when I finally had the space to start a mushroom farm, that's exactly what we did.

Around then I'd been working a job I wasn't happy in, and I knew by that point that growing food was the thing I actually loved. A little before COVID, the itch to leave got strong. Then COVID hit, a severance path opened up, and I took it. I cashed out my 401k and went all in on mushrooms. I never once looked back or thought it was a bad idea. It just always felt right.

The uphill years

This was before Fantastic Fungi, back when telling people you farmed mushrooms got you jokes instead of questions. Plenty of folks at the market would poke fun, sometimes almost mean about it. After that film came out, a lot of those same people came back, apologized, and asked me how to actually enjoy mushrooms. I'd show them, and most of them became regulars.

The whole trick was just getting a chance to talk.

Almost every time, once someone gave it a real shot, they ended up liking mushrooms.

The educator

Over the years I became one of Central Florida's go-to mushroom educators. I've spoken at statewide conferences like the Florida Herbal Conference and the Florida Permaculture Convergence, because getting people over their fear of fungi is half the work, and I enjoy that part. The best conversations usually come from the reishi species that grow right here in Florida. Most people only know the one, and we have at least five.

The depth

A lot of the depth behind this farm comes from the company I keep. Our involvement with the Florida Mycological Society, and prominent DNA validators like Scott Ostuni, gives Florida Shroom King a taxonomic depth few cultivators or extractors can come close to. Scott has one of the highest iNaturalist observation counts in the country and has led forays as far out as the Telluride Mushroom Festival. Every Friday after the market we still hang out for hours talking about the DNA work being done right now.

What I believe

Why I grow the way I do

I have a preference for growing outdoors, in real weather. I think that's the whole point. A mushroom grown in the environment it evolved in gets natural stressors, sun it can handle, real air moving through, and it grows up full and resilient instead of pale and thin. Stress is relative. Without any stress there's no growth.

I believe things should be grown the way nature intends, with natural means and never synthetics, pesticides, or strange chemicals that don't belong. Grown right, a mushroom doesn't need any of that. Those are the qualities I most want to capture when I make an extract.

Lion's Mane mushrooms fruiting at the Florida Shroom King farm

Andrew Johnson with finished Florida Shroom King extracts

Why I make my own extracts

The origin of the extracts is simple. A customer at the market told me my first alcohol batch was tough to take. I knew right away what that meant: if it's hard to take, you won't take it regularly, and then it never does you any good. So I went looking for a better way to make it.

I skipped the alcohol most brands use, because it tastes bad and it isn't the most effective way to make an extract anyway. Ultrasound is what we landed on. It's solvent-free and it works by physical means, and the goal is to capture as many of the mushroom's bioactive compounds as I can without degrading them. From the very first batch I was happy. The flavor got better, and honestly, so did the way it made me feel.

An extract you actually enjoy taking is one you'll keep taking, and that's when it does you any good.

How we got here

The farm on one side, the method on the other

I didn't start with everything laid out for me. I started with a few mushrooms and a burning passion to understand how these organisms can play a role in our lives. This is the record of how we have grown as mycologists, serving our community along the way.

2014Farm

First cultivation

Where it started

I grew my first gourmet mushrooms in 2014. It started as curiosity more than a business, and it told me what I wanted to spend my time on.

2019Farm

Full-time farm

I went all in

In 2019 I committed fully and set out to grow good food for my community. When I started, there wasn't another mushroom farm for almost a hundred miles, so I learned it by doing it.

Summer 2020Farm

First market sales

Teaching Florida to eat mushrooms

When the farmers markets came back in the summer of 2020, we sold our first mushrooms, and I found most people were scared of them. As the season went on and awareness grew, people started opening up, curious how mushrooms might help them. That was our opening to share the wonders of fungi. Once the skeptics gave them a real chance, most came back for more, week after week.

March 2022Method

Ultrasound extraction

A customer changed how I make it

The first alcohol batch I made, a customer at the market told me it was tough to take. If it is hard to take, you will not take it, so I rebuilt the method from scratch. I dropped the alcohol entirely and moved to ultrasound: sound waves passing through pure water, drawing the good out of whole fruiting bodies with no solvents at all. Our extracts went on sale that year, made in a way almost nobody else was using yet.

September 2022Method

Nanoencapsulation

Better absorption, naturally

Six months later, I brought nanoencapsulation into the process, which helps your body take in more of the extract than a plain powder would. Still alcohol-free, now in a glycerin base built for cleaner delivery.

November 2022Farm

Outdoor cultivation

I took it outdoors

I kept seeing mushrooms fruiting on their own in the compost piles, and realized they just needed a little help. I built my first shade house that November and started growing outdoors in the cooler months. Production nearly doubled in the busy season, and the outdoor mushrooms came up fuller. That made us the first mushroom farm in Florida to cultivate outdoors.

October 2023Method

Cryo-extraction

Then we raised our own bar

By mid 2023, we were glad to see ultrasound extraction being adopted more widely by other careful mushroom farms. We took it as a sign the standard was rising, so we raised our own. That year we refined our cryo-extraction and had it running in our extracts by October: fresh Lion's Mane fruiting bodies, stabilized through sublimation with no heat degradation. It was a step forward in capturing the raw essence of the mushroom, right from the moment of harvest.

July 2024Community

Florida Mycological Society

We started a mushroom club

A few of us had been crossing paths on the trail since 2022, and in July 2024 we made it official. Scott Ostuni, John Cook, and I founded the Florida Mycological Society, with our first public walk in DeLand. Ever since, we have held free monthly walks on trails across Florida, teaching everyone who comes how to find, identify, and use wild mushrooms. Anyone who wants to get better at mycology, or learn to grow their own, has a home here.

Late 2024Farm

A new home base

Rebuilt on better ground

After the 2024 hurricanes, we moved the farm to a new home: seventeen acres of ground that has been farmland for over a hundred years. What looked like a setback became the opening we needed, the room to finally grow toward real scale. This is where the farm lives now.

2026Farm

Year-round outdoor cultivation

Through a full Florida summer

Late in 2025 I built a new shade house aimed at the one gap left: the Florida summer. Most mushroom farmers will tell you growing in this heat is impossible. We are doing it anyway, pulling large, beautiful flushes of Lion's Mane all summer long for the farmers market and for our extracts. When this first full summer closes out, year-round outdoor cultivation in Florida is proven, not promised.

The road ahead

Where we're going

Right now we are building a bigger home for the farm, more room to grow and to make our extracts, and putting up more shade houses. We are working toward growing Reishi and other medicinal mushrooms at a much larger scale, all the same way we grow our medicinal mushrooms: outdoors, in real weather, the way nature intended. There is a lot still ahead, and that is exactly how I like it.

The way I see it, a good extract is three things done right: the mushrooms you start with, how you draw the good out of them, and how your body takes it in. We grow or hand-select every mushroom ourselves, extract them with ultrasound and cryo, and finish with nanoencapsulation, all under one roof. Very few farms take it this far, and I am not done. The mushroom world is still young, and I change what I do the moment I find something better.

The community

I helped start the Florida Mycological Society. One Friday, a post went up calling all the mushroom people to meet at Spring Hammock, so we went. By the end, a group of us decided we should do this more often, and we started the club. We've held a free walk every month since. If you want to learn to identify and understand Florida fungi with other people, the Florida Mycological Society is where to go.

What I'm actually trying to do

What keeps me going now is bigger than the booth. I want to chip away at the fear people have around mushrooms and get more folks eating them, one honest conversation at a time. The Florida Mycological Society is a big part of that. We host free walks, we keep showing up, and we work to get more people comfortable with fungi. My favorite thing at the market is still when someone who used to hate mushrooms comes back, tells me they've come around, and brings somebody with them.

Where to find me

I'm not a one-man booth anymore, either. Some of the people who run our tables are mycologists from the club, and Scott handles a lot of the market side. You can find me or one of our mushroom professionals at four markets every single week. In six years I've missed three, and I count that as a mark of dedication to the people who show up to support local farmers and find good, healthy food.

I still grow the mushrooms and make every extract myself. We cultivate Lion's Mane, Oyster, and Reishi, indoors and outdoors both. Our partner wildcrafters handle the wild side: Chaga and half our Reishi up in Michigan, Turkey Tail out in Oregon. We're the only mushroom farm in Volusia County, and the nearest one is about a hundred miles from here. We're also the only mushroom farm in Florida cultivating outdoors, on land that's been farmland for over a hundred years. What we grow here, we extract here. One farm, fruit to finished product.

If you want to see the mushrooms in person or ask me anything about them, come find me at the market. And if you already know what you're after, the extracts are here.

Come find me at the market Or start with the extracts

I'm not a celebrity and I don't want to be one. This page exists so you know exactly who makes what you're taking. Everything else, ask me at the booth.

Mush Love! ✌️❤️‍🍄👑
Andrew

Where to go next

How I make the extracts Start with the extracts

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.