Santa Cruz Mushrooms blooms in Live Oak, offering rare varieties and a peek behind the curtain

Inside an unremarkable building along a busy corridor in Live Oak, there are rooms crowded with otherworldly beings in ethereal shapes, peacefully twisting toward artificial suns. 

Farmer Chris Phillips pulled back the plastic curtain sealing one of the hand-built closets filled with fungi. His mushroom farm grows about a dozen culinary varieties, depending on the season: stout shiitakes, frilly lion’s mane and oyster mushrooms in colors ranging from rosy pink to sunny yellow and a stormy blue-tinged grey. The air is humid, fresh and woodsy, like a forest floor. 

In addition to their mesmerizing shapes, each mushroom is fresh and plump, some almost glowing with a pearlescent sheen — so unlike the boxes of mushrooms in grocery store aisles that are often dried out or crushed due to travel. When customers come into the shop, Phillips, or sometimes his wife, Tiffany Phillips, cuts them to order, so they never lose their luster. 

Tiffany arranges each basket with care, like a bouquet of flowers. “You want them to look pretty and nice, and for [customers] to be able to see each different type of mushroom that they’re getting,” she said.

They cut their mushrooms to order and charge a flat rate of $15 per pound so customers can mix and match each basket. The chef’s blend of four or five different varieties is their most popular item, Chris Phillips said, because it allows people to explore the different textures, which range from delicate and tender to hearty and meatlike.

Offering a maximally fresh product, and allowing customers to explore the farm and the mushroom-growing process, is what sets Santa Cruz Mushrooms apart from other farms and shops in the area, said Phillips. It’s a passion he fell into as a second career after a journey to lose weight introduced him to foraging. After a year of growing the business organically through word of mouth, Phillips is preparing to expand production into a larger space next year. 

The husband-and-wife team opened Santa Cruz Mushrooms in January. What began as a small operation selling a few baskets at the Everett Family Farm stand in Soquel and other produce stalls has expanded to regular deliveries to nearby restaurants, including Shadowbrook Restaurant in Capitola, Lago di Como in Live Oak, Tortilla Flats in Soquel, Cavalletta in Aptos and Circle & Square in Corralitos. They sell about 100 pounds a week directly to customers and food businesses. 

“It’s a cool thing, as a farmer, to bring your produce to chefs, because they see a lot of food,” said Chris Phillips. “When they go, ‘oooh,’ that’s pretty satisfying.” 

A self-taught grower, he originally grew oyster mushrooms and lion’s mane, which are easy to cultivate and reach full size in just a few weeks. But as he improved his skills, Phillips chose more unusual varieties, like the long-stemmed pioppino mushrooms. The learning process is a lot of fun, said Phillips. 

“The reason you’re not going to see these in the grocery stores very much is because they just don’t translate,” or retain their quality under supermarket conditions, he said. “We’ve tried providing for stores, and you just can’t keep the mushrooms looking like this.” 

Mushrooms were a key part of Phillips’ recent personal health journey. For 20 years, Phillips was a glass contractor, and he and his wife ran Showcase Shower Door Co. in the same location. But as he got older, his weight became an issue. His work doing construction left him winded, and he had difficulty getting in and out of his truck. “I decided, it’s time to do something,” he said.

Phillips joined a weight-loss program and he and Tiffany started to change the way they ate, including more vegetables and cooking at home. But he knew that he needed to be more active. Going to the gym didn’t sound like fun, he said, but a friend told him about foraging, the mushroom season and the Fungus Fair downtown. “I thought to myself, I could get out in the woods, hike around and learn about mushrooms,” said Phillips. “I started doing it, and I was immediately hooked.”

Eventually, as a result of all of his lifestyle changes, Phillips lost about 70 pounds over five years. He discovered that he loved being in the woods, the sounds of nature and learning about the different kinds of fungi. “I love mushrooms. I love to eat them, and there’s so many varieties. They just really captured me,” he said. 

After his brother-in-law bought him a kit to grow mushrooms at home, he started growing mushrooms as a hobby. He grew so much that he began looking for a place to sell his extras. In 2023, the couple retired from the construction industry and decided to go all-in on the mushroom business. 

Mushrooms were at the center of Chris Phillips’ health journey, and he believes that they can help other people, too: “Getting a gym membership can be tough, but you can get a pound of mushrooms right now, take them home, cook them, and it’s some of the cleanest, most nutritious, beneficial food that I believe that you can find anywhere.”

All edible mushrooms are nutritious, and Phillips says consuming them regularly helped him improve his health. 

He and Tiffany say they try to maximize the health benefits of their product by controlling every factor of the growing process. The substrate, or growing material, is a mix of locally sourced oak sawdust and organic soy husk, with no pesticides or fertilizers.

The substrate gets sterilized with steam, so no other microorganisms or bacteria grow or compete with the fungi. Then it gets inoculated with mushroom spores. “It’s nothing but steam-distilled water, oak, soy, spores and air,” said Chris Phillips. 

Phillips uses about 400 pounds of growing material per week, and for the past year, he has sterilized it over the course of five days in small pots, 40 pounds at a time. In early November, he purchased a larger sterilizer that will allow him to increase his production by at least 50% and save him hours. With the new equipment, he’ll be able to do the same amount of sterilization in one day. 

Next year, he plans to move into a larger facility or warehouse. With more space, he would be able to control the environments and temperatures in order to grow warm weather-loving varieties like pink oyster mushrooms all year round. 

No matter how big the farm grows, Phillips said he’ll continue inviting customers into the back of the shop to see fantastic fungi. Educating people about mushrooms will always be core to his business, he said. “People are just enthralled by mushrooms,” he said. “They’re amazing and mysterious, so it’s really fun to teach people.”

1970 17th Ave., Santa Cruz; santacruzmushrooms.com.

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