Meet your Farmers

We, Chris and Jacqueline Corvaia, both have a good back story. We both formerly participated in the daily rat race to compete for the mighty dollar, putting in tireless nights doing CNA work after the college experience and long hours of Heavy Equipment Operations. Then, we move on to the extremes of HVAC installation, maintenance, and service.  We can't say we didn’t like our former jobs. We gained important knowledge and experience from them and enjoyed working with our residents, customers, and co-workers. Amongst this working environment, we have a family where we are raising a total of 6 children while still pursuing a bachelor’s degree (currently in 3rd year while maintaining the president list through online courses at Grand Canyon University) in Behavioral Sciences. Our hobbies and interests include family time, reading, learning, and exploring nature. This led us to how we learned about mycology. We received a grow-your-own mushroom kit about five years ago as a gift. Not knowing or understanding what cards we were dealt, we investigated what we received and, to our completely unexpected surprise, learned about the mushroom growing industry and, more specifically, the exotic mushroom industry. Armed with our self-teaching and interests, we wanted to try this ourselves. We ordered some science gear and took on an experiment. We grew our very first mushroom and made our first propagation/ clone, and a hobby was born. As we fast forward a few years, our hobby became more successful, but not without a very bumpy road of learning. As we became more knowledgeable and familiar with mycology, we started creating larger processing equipment to produce more intriguing delicacies to share with our friends and family. We used our former education to replicate a circadian cycle and mimic seasons while providing all the fresh air and moisture to encourage mushroom formation and growth. It is almost counterproductive to what HVAC is designed to do but extremely essential to the success of mushroom growing. Now being familiar with a little bit of the past, at the current stage of Farmsteading & More, we operate mostly on a seasonal basis with a huge desire to become a year-round operation. With our current capabilities, we produce around 60 pounds of mushrooms a week, providing for only 2-3 local farmers markets. Based on our observations, there is plenty of room in our local area for more growth. In the rare event of us overproducing, we rent a commercial kitchen from the local United Methodist Church, where we were inspected by the local health department and the state for a processing facility. We process and preserve our mushrooms with our freeze dryer. In the freeze-dryer’s downtime from mushrooms, we process many varieties of freeze-dried ice creams and candies. These products can be found at several locations and local shops, including Montebello Gardens Florists & Gifts- Hamilton, IL, The Engraved Hive Quincy, IL, Fresh Roots Carthage, IL, The Macomb Food Co-Op, and Hamilton School District 338 offers our freeze-dried products as concessions. Along with our website and ETSY platform. Some of our goals for the near future are to continue to educate the population about the many benefits mushrooms possess along with mycology in our environment to produce ecological stability, all backed by science and research. We want to provide our products to local grocery stores and restaurants to make the delicacies more available. We will continue to provide community involvement and employment opportunities to help give back to our local community.

-         Farmsteading & More-Chris & Jacqueline Corvaia