We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andy Weyenberg. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andy below.

Hi Andy, thanks for joining us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

I have definitely had that thought before. Last time, it was actually during a very quiet, “normal” week. I had gotten my daily task sheets finished on time a few days in a row and it was looking like I’d be able to end my day early, and I wondered to myself if this was what it used to feel like back when I had a somewhat regular job; working until the end of a pre-set day instead of needing to keep going until the work is done. Almost immediately after, two things happened. First, I found a problem with my steam generator that required me to completely dismantle and reassemble it with some spare parts I had, and the second was getting a phone call from one of my restaurant clients asking for 30 extra pounds of mushrooms a week starting with their delivery a few days away. I took this call while deep into the reassembly part of my unexpected project, in the middle of rewiring my heating element. Not wanting to disappoint a client or lose out on more business, I quickly ran through some options to figure out how this could be done, decided I would have to figure it out, and gave them an answer “I can definitely have that amount for next week’s delivery, and I’ll see what I can do about getting you those extra 30 lbs this week. See you in two days!” My day that was about to end early turned into a very late day of finishing the sterilizer fix, figuring out how much I’d need to bump up production to meet the increase, and calling all the other mushroom farmers I had forged relationships with to see if they had any extra produce that could help me fill the order two days away. A nice quiet early night turned into a late-night extravaganza of problem solving and calculating and planning, and at the end of it I felt GREAT! I felt galvanized and excited and pumped to start the next day of work. And two days later when I dropped off that restaurant order with the extra 30 pounds, it really sunk in that what I was doing with starting my own farm and business was exactly the job I wanted to be doing. There are always a dozen projects that need taking care of, a handful of long-term expansion plans to flesh out and implement, and an endless to-do list of small daily tasks, and that’s exactly the way I want it.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Andy! I’m a mushroom farmer operating in the Hudson Valley north of New York City, hosting a new farm-in-residence and occasional individualized artistic retreats. I’m working on a historic plot of land near Newburgh, NY that used to be a farm in the 1700’s, but was de-agriculturalized and subdivided into residential plots in about 1850, leaving only this 7 acre plot of land with the original farmhouse from the 1700’s. I grow a wide variety of culinary mushrooms to distribute to individuals and restaurants in the area, with the overarching goal of re-agriculturalizing the property using natural, beyond-organic practices and permaculture principles. The mushroom farm is the first part of that plan; it produces a significant amount of compost, which is then fed to worms to create worm castings (some of the absolute best fertilizer available). This Vermicast is then put into the soil to help revitalize and build the soil food web for the annual and food forest plantings installed by Fable and Sow, the farm-in-residence. Eventually, we plan for the property to be not only a working farm, but also a place to host workshops and events that helps inspire visitors to revitalize their own natural habitats. We believe in the power of soil. Beneath our feet, a whole host of different organisms work together to make the systems of the planet function. Sometimes they work with each other, and sometimes against, but always they work towards the overall growth of the ecosystem. I followed a pretty standard path to getting to where I am: I got a BFA in Theatre Arts from Boston University, worked as a rock-climbing instructor in North Carolina, then worked as a custom home remodeler in Cleveland, Ohio before deciding to move to New York and start a mushroom farm.
Okay, so while that was pretty much my path to where I am today, there were a lot of connections in between. I learned about and started falling in love with permaculture while I was living in North Carolina, and then had to move back to Cleveland (my hometown) due to a health scare in my family. While there, I was unable to get a secure job because I didn’t know how long I would be in the area, so I spent just about every minute of my time learning about permaculture and farming in general. Ultimately I was in this limbo space for about 4 months and during that time I read every book I could find in every library within 50 miles of me. I reached out to and volunteered at every farm I could find that was doing things I was interested in. And ultimately, I ended up getting a full-time job for a bit as the artistic and education associate at a theatre company in Cleveland and buying a small house. After a while, I realized I was done working in theatre. I had too many other interests I wanted to pursue, and the itch to get my hands in the dirt was only growing stronger. So I quit my job with a bit of savings and absolutely no idea what to do next. I somehow lucked into a job with a neighbor of mine who got curious when he saw me attempting to remodel my basement using some very basic woodworking skills and a lot of youtube videos. While he acknowledged that I had no idea what I was doing, he liked my impulses and determination, so he hired me to work with his custom home remodeling company. His right-hand man quit three weeks into me working there, so from that point and for the next five years, he taught me everything I know about woodworking, tile work, plumbing, electrical work, and everything in between. These turned out to be some of the most important lessons of my life, and I use what I learned with Ben and Lake Erie Remodeling every single day. However, from that first day I started working with him, he knew that I wanted to be a farmer, and I continued reading, volunteering at farms, practicing in my own backyard, and attending farming conferences. Sometime during this I met a mushroom farmer and loved the blend of science and farmwork that it entailed, along with producing a product that is inherently local. Many culinary mushrooms (oysters especially) don’t travel well and will only last for about a week under refrigeration, so if you want them you have to buy them locally. And trust me, you want them. I thought I hated eating mushrooms my whole life until I grew them myself and realized what REAL mushrooms tasted like. Ultimately, after working for a few seasons at farms in the Hudson Valley (many of my best friends from college are artists who live in NYC), I fell in love with the area and decided to take the plunge and start my own operation. I had enough saved up from remodeling work and lucked out with the sale of my Cleveland house that that dream became a reality at the beginning of 2022.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I was always told to find a niche and specialize, so in starting this farm I set out to do just that. Start with culinary mushrooms, sell them to restaurants, then figure things out from there. While that may be a great goal to get to eventually, when starting out I really had to work to unlearn that lesson. I had a very specific plan for a very specific thing, and didn’t even consider what might happen when one of the pieces in that plan failed to materialize. What if restaurants didn’t trust a new mushroom farmer to be able to meet weekly order demands? What if distributors felt the same? What if restaurants already had a farmer for fresh mushrooms? All questions I didn’t really consider to be major roadblocks when first starting out, but when working with something perishable, these questions become hugely important. I had to produce mushrooms consistently in order to get the clients, but until I got them, would I just waste all those mushrooms? I learned to find new and creative ways to throw spaghetti at the wall, waiting to see what stuck. Yes, it’s important to keep the main thing the main thing; it’s great to have your specialty and lean into it. However, when you’re just starting out, you can’t be sure that the things you plan to specialize into are going to work out, you’ve got to try a lot of things to figure out the things that really work for you. My plan is still to sell only to restaurants and larger distributors, but in the meantime I have a plethora of ways to make sales and get my products onto the plates of customers while I build that network.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Meeting people face to face. Farmers markets have been the best source of new clients for me, because they give me the chance to interact face to face with new people and sell them not only my product, but myself and my farm. I never planned to do farmers markets, it ended up being a stop-gap to generate extra income while I built my main base of restaurant clients. Looking back on that, I can’t believe they weren’t my first choice. As someone who completely changed careers twice before settling into starting my own farm/business, I sometimes forget to think about my past experience as assets or tools I can use. It was only after the first time I finished doing a Saturday farmers market, having sold out way faster than expected and with a handful of chefs interested in talking more about my mushrooms, that I remembered I had four years of conservatory-style theatre performance training. I completely forgot about one of my strongest and most useful tools, simply because it wasn’t the MAIN thing I was doing any more.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.windridgefarm.org
• Instagram: @windridgeny
• Facebook: Windridge Farm
• Other: Tiktok: @windridgeny

Image Credits
Emil Benjamin