8 minute read
Greenwood Mushrooms
By Chris Barber Contributing Writer
Like a host of other mushroom operations in southern Chester County, Greenwood Mushrooms evolved from a one-man operation more than 60 years ago into a diverse company that produces a lot of mushrooms. At this point in the company’s evolution, it produces 16 million pounds of mushrooms a year.
During the course of the expansion and modernization, Greenwood has added variety to its offerings, as well as shipping throughout the United States with its own truck fleet.
This company in Kennett Township is run by second-generation owners Louis Marson and his wife Patricia, and their three sons, Louis, Chris and Matt.
Matt Marson, who discussed the company’s founding, said his grandfather grew mushrooms and passed that skill onto his son, Louis, Matt’s father. In the 1960s, Louis (the father) rented a couple of mushroom houses—called doubles—and used his acquired skills to grow mushrooms on a small scale for retail.
It was not until the three sons reached their young adulthood in the early-1990s that they ramped up the operations for wholesale and shipping.
At that point, they also changed the name of the company from LMI to Greenwood Mushrooms.
It just seemed right, Matt said, because the boys had all gone to Greenwood Elementary School and they were located in an area where the name “Greenwood” is on roadways and places.
By 2003, the company had doubled its capacity. They now have 56 growing houses—with 448,000 square feet of production space.
Louis and his wife Patricia are in their late 70s now, and they are still on the scene, arriving at work every day at 7 a.m., Matt said. However, the lion’s share of the management is divided into the business end for Matt and the shared growing responsibilities for the younger Louis and
Continued on Page 38 A set of new air conditioners ensures that temperatures remain good inside the mushroom houses.
All photos by Chris Barber
The owners gather at the sign in the front yard. From left are Matt, Louis (the son), Louis (the father) and Chris Marson.
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his brother Chris. Those tasks are carried out by a harvesting, packing, shipping and operations staff of more than 100 employees.
The company now offers the familiar white mushrooms as well as portobellos, criminis and a scattering of exotics like shiitake, maitakes and enokis. They also pack for retail and wholesale from little 4-ounce packages to big 5- and 10-pound tubs. They ship their products throughout the United States, with special orders going as far as the West Coast by special arrangement.
While this expansion reflects effective leadership and healthy operations, it brings along new adventures and additional challenges. The challenges include hiring workers, the complexities of shipping, keeping the crop safe and responding to the schedule and conditions of raising a fussy crop.
“A million things can go wrong. It is so complex. There’s nothing simple about it,” Matt said.
One of the recently arriving big challenges they face is finding and maintaining a labor force for all the trucking, growing, harvesting and packing work.
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One of many trucks that serves the company for shipping and just moving things around on the farm. Long rows of mushroom houses are a testament to the huge production efforts that Greenwood is involved with.
Greenwood Mushrooms
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Experts in the industry have pointed to several reasons for the labor shortage, some of which are related to the recent COVID-19 pandemic: • Parents needing to stay at home while school buildings and daycares were closed during the pandemic; • Federal economic stimulus packages and extended unemployment benefits; • A younger generation of workers who don’t want to work in this sector, preferring to work in an office or at home; • Without the H-2A labor option, which applies to immigrant workers (but for seasonal laborers only), growers and packers concentrated in this region are competing for local workers, who have a big pool to choose from. Mushroom growing is not formally classified as
“seasonal.”
Getting the crop to market is another challenge. Greenwood has a truck fleet that travels nationwide. That includes, however, maintaining the trucks, paying for fuel, hiring and employing drivers, dealing with pop-up traffic problems along the way and working with other local produce farmers who don’t have their own trucking operations.
Matt also has in his responsibilities keeping the
From left, Lou Marson (the son), Chris Marson, and Lou Marson (the father) join for a picture near the mushroom house complex.
company safe on many fronts. He must maintain the safety of conditions for the workers as well as must make sure their procedures keep anyone from getting sick by eating their product. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Agency—OSHA—addresses practices to make sure the workers don’t slip and fall, encounter collapsed ladders or otherwise hurt themselves while at work.
The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture deals with the safety of the product.
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Greenwood Mushrooms
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“The state comes in, they’ll pop in sometimes unannounced, set up shop and stay a whole week. We pass with flying colors,” Matt said.
He gave the example that there must be no peanuts on the property because of the severe allergies that some people have to the product. In fact, they must not even offer candy with peanuts in their candy machines due to the risk that it could be transferred to a harvester’s hands and into the beds where the mushrooms are growing.
They have been extra-vigilant with safety since the arrival of COVID-19, implementing new cleaning practices.
“Somebody is always cleaning something. We have an employee to oversee safety, and we hire workers to manicure the property,” Matt added.
Inside the mushroom houses, [younger] Louis and Chris have a lot of conditions to deal with in addition to turning out a uniform crop production at smooth timing to meet market and shipping needs.
Growing is extremely complex and it involves keeping the houses free of diseases and pests, loading compost and later peat moss, spreading the spawn (seeds) and getting the mushrooms picked and sent over to packing.
Mushrooms are a year-around crop that requires constant monitoring of humidity levels and temperatures. Louis and Chris must control that with heating and air conditioning capacity, as Louis pointed to a line of new, industrial-size air conditioning units – a major expense – attached to the end of the growing rooms.
As for the care of the crop, mushrooms must be watered— but not too much or too little.
They must be free of bugs and parasitic molds as well.
Louis said those tiny, annoying little mushroom flies called phorids that chomp away at the mushroom mycelia (the rooting network of the mushroom) are indeed a problem, but
Steam rises from the mushroom houses as they are pasteurized to prepare them for the next crop.
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Grower Lou Marson stands beside the growing beds inside the mushroom house. The Greenwood Mushroom office sits along Norway Road, and the grounds are kept wellmanicured, Matt Marson said.
not so much a Greenwood as in other locations because they are relatively isolated.
The necessity for more than one grower at such a large mushroom company is evident, in that the mushrooms grow fast and adjustments must be made—sometimes even more than once daily.
There’s also overseeing needed for all those processes like the days of pasteurizing the houses for sterilization, filling them with compost and adding peat moss to spur fruiting at just the right time.
There are no days off – not holidays, not snow days, not evenings. Louis said the houses need monitoring every day, and even at night.
The company has evolved a lot since it started as a one-person operation decades ago, and everyone in this family business is dedicated to ensuring that it continues to evolve into the future.
Owner Lou Marson shared his knowledge that he learned from his father, who taught him many things about mushroom growing.
