USA - New York State: Collar City Mushrooms Moving To Indian Ladder Farms
Relocation from Troy to New Scotland was financially necessary and will allow growth, owner says
By Steve Barnes -Senior Writer
Dec 17, 2024
Avery Stempel, founder of Collar City Mushrooms, inspects his crop in the grow room at his shop in Troy in October. The business has closed in Troy as it relocates to Indian Ladder Farm in New Scotland. Its mushrooms are produced on a growing medium, called substrate, that is inoculated with mushroom spores. = Jim Franco/Times Union
NEW SCOTLAND — Collar City Mushrooms closed its Troy facility on Sunday as the company begins a relocation to Indian Ladder Farms.
The businesses have worked together for several years and both expect to benefit from the new arrangement, said Laura Ten Eyck, manager of Indian Ladder Farms and a member of the family that has owned the property, on 325 acres between Altamont and Voorheesville, for more than a century. She said Collar City’s mushrooms and fungi-based products will be sold in the farm store, due to reopen March 15 following a renovation necessitated by a fire in September, and the companies will expand a relationship that in the past had Collar City Mushrooms hosting dinners at Indian Ladder and providing fresh mushrooms for Indian Ladder’s menus as well as for use in making some of its beers and hard ciders.
“We’re excited to have them. It adds to what we already grow on the farm, and we grow a lot,” Ten Eyck said. She said Collar City’s and Indian Ladder’s existing educational programs will increase through collaboration to include farm and foraging tours as visitors explore and learn about Indian Ladder’s woods, wetlands, fields and orchards.
Collar City will grow its mushrooms in a shipping container, said founder Avery Stempel, which offers about as much space as the company had in Troy. As production ramps up, he said, there is room on the farm for three more containers, and Collar City’s lab and production facility will be in part of an adjacent barn.
Stempel and Ten Eyck said they expect some mushrooms may be cultivated in natural settings, but those would most likely be for demonstration purposes and perhaps a pick-your-own mushroom patch akin to Indian Ladder’s apple orchards. Stempel said the controlled environment of the shipping container and other indoor facilities is preferred for the edible mushrooms Collar City sells to markets and restaurants and other types used in products, including a skin-care line called Of the Forest that features lotions and scrubs.
Stempel said the company’s original location on Second Avenue in Lansingburgh was too expensive to be financially viable in the long term, and he was unable to get financing from traditional lenders or those that specialize in agriculture.
Collar City and Indian Ladder will have a lease arrangement, the terms of which are yet to be worked out, both sides said. The companies first considered a Collar City presence at the farm two years ago, they said. While two locations proved logistically problematic for Stemple, he and Ten Eyck began discussing a relocation after Collar City finalized its decision to leave Troy, they said.
Stempel, who began growing mushrooms as a pandemic project in 2020 and opened his business in winter 2021, said he expects only a minor disruption to Collar City’s supply of mushrooms, as the company has racks of growing mushrooms and others packaged for retail sale. After water and electric service to the shipping container at Indian Ladder Farms are completed, growing can begin immediately, with some mushroom varieties ready for harvest after only a week or so.
Dec 17, 2024
Senior Writer
Steve Barnes has worked at the Times Union since 1996, served as arts editor for six years, and since 2005 has been a senior writer. He generally covers restaurants, food and the arts, and is the Times Union's restaurant columnist and theater critic. Steve was also a journalism instructor at the University at Albany for 12 years. You can reach him at sbarnes@timesunion.com or 518-454-5489.