Owner of Mushroom Mountain
My journey started when I was quite young. One of my earliest memories is when I ate a bunch of poisonous mushrooms, right out of the grass I was playing in. Luckily my mom saw me do it, and she intervened. Back in those days, we grew most of our food, my grandma lived right across the street, and she had a massive garden, cows, chickens, pigs, you name it. My parents were at work, while my sister and I were outdoors all day long under the watch of grandma. We explored, picked wild fruit and mushrooms. We were told not to eat any mushrooms before they were inspected, so we would bring them back, and grandpa would go through them. The good ones, we cooked on the woodburning stove, gills up, salted. While the mushrooms were cooking, all the juices would pool into the mushroom, and that salty water, we drank that. That was the best part.
Mushroom Mountain was actually someone else’s dream. But I made it a reality with the financial help of my parents. I was a web designer at the time, I made Mushroom Mountain visible online. I actually built the first two websites myself. In 2007, I moved with my ex partner up to SC, where Mushroom Mountain is located at the moment. These days, I run it on my own, and it is better than ever. My team is growing, and I could not be happier with the people I have surrounded myself with. Coming to work every day is a joy!
I love to see people walk away with all this amazing knowledge about growing mushrooms, and then seeing them continue their own mushroom growing journey. I enjoy getting emails all the time with pictures of mushrooms fruiting in all kinds of ways: logs, on straw, on sawdust, woodchips.
In my free time, I love to be in the woods, picking mushrooms and wild plants, and of course taking tons of pictures of anything I find. I am fascinated by nature in every possible aspect. Email me at sporeprints@gmail.com
Read more about Olga and the story of Mushroom Mountain in her interview with the World Mushroom Society.
