Fungi in the family
Jessica Minoza wins $5,000 award to market morel mushrooms, follows in father's fungus-focused footsteps
Andrew Livingstone
Northern News Services
Thursday, April 16, 2015
DEH GAH GOT'IE KOE/FORT PROVIDENCE
When Jessica Minoza began picking mushrooms last summer she struggled to notice the money-making fungi flourishing in the soil made ripe by the previous year's forest fire season.
Fort Providence resident Jessica Minoza recently won a $5,000 award from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology for her business plan to market and sell morel mushrooms to restaurants and chefs across Canada. Minoza, 27, is pictured here with Riel Stevenson-Burke taking a break from mushroom picking in 2014. - photo courtesy of Jessica Minoza
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Now the 27-year-old Fort Providence resident has mushroom eyes.
"When I first went out picking, I couldn't find any at all," she said with a sense of excitement in her voice.
"We had someone from B.C. who had been picking mushrooms for 30 years and he helped train us."
It takes patience and persistence to train your eye to find mushrooms, she said, and once she was able to spot them with ease, the joy of the labour-intensive work formed.
"Even the people in our camp, when we were training, people got excited about the sizes of the mushrooms they got," she said. "We were all having mushroom dreams."
For Minoza the dreams aren't just about mushrooms alone, but come with dollar signs and inspiration to help her community.
Minoza's business idea to market and sell morel mushrooms picked in the Deh Cho region netted the ambitious and enthusiastic Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) student $5,000 and a place in the school's business incubator.
"A lot of people, the other entrepreneurs at NAIT, they're working on oil industry-type businesses and smartphone apps, and in the end mushrooms won," Minoza said. "There are a lot of people interested and I'm happy about that. It's going to put us on the map and people will recognize. I'm so happy to be from the NWT."
Minoza's idea started to take shape when she was introduced to Ryan O'Flynn, a former NAIT student and up-and-coming chef. When she found out he was a culinary whizz, Minoza gave O'Flynn some morels to use in the kitchen.
It was a birthday dish he cooked for her, beef wellington, that caught her attention. Having grown up in the NWT, morels aren't part of the regular cuisine and it was one of the first experiences she'd had with them.
"He used the mushrooms and it was beautiful," she said. "He was so excited that I had them. He knew they came from Italy and France and Africa, but not the NWT, so I gave him a whole bunch and he used them at the Canadian Culinary Championships.
O'Flynn used the earthy fungi in a dish of Alberta river sturgeon, cured Quebec foie gras and wild Northwest and Okanagan apples that won him a gold medal.
"We've already had a lot of requests coming in to place orders and with Ryan as a supporter and having lived in Europe for years, he's connected to all those people there, so there is a lot of buzz," she said.
From there, the dream of marketing mushrooms to restaurants and chefs around the world started to grow. Minoza learned about the 2015 Hatch Startup Challenge at the institute and put together a pitch for Mycelium, the name of her company, that was one of eight winners selected.
The spores of the idea were born in the forest fire-stricken areas around Fort Providence last year. Minoza had come home to the hamlet where her father James Christie had already decided to put her to work in the morel mushroom madness that has swept over the region in the last few years.
Christie opened Ever-Ready Dehcho Expediting in 2011 to capitalize on the rarely-tapped morel mushroom market and had over 35 pickers in camp last season.
"I was living in Vancouver and moved back last May and I wanted to know about the mushrooms," she said. "He gave me the job without even asking me, before I knew it I was manager of the camp. He's really put me in charge and he's so excited for me right now."
The market has always been there, said Minoza, but out-of-town pickers would come to the region, make thousands of dollars, and none would stay in the community.
"I know that a lot of other buyers are from different countries and provinces, and they come up to the NWT they pick all the morels and bring pickers and they take and they leave and there is nothing staying here," she said, adding she plans to pick morels herself again this summer.
"I want to market that I'm from Fort Providence, someone who is aboriginal and will buy locally from people there and the money goes to them and it's an economic opportunity."
Morel mushrooms have honeycomb-like tops made up of a network of ridges with pits in between them. They can appear grey, yellow or black in colour and are described as having an earthy and nutty flavour, with a meaty texture.
They are prized by gourmet cooks, especially in French cuisine, and can command substantial prices. Fresh morels can catch $10 to $14 a pound but if the picker has the expertise to dry them, a pound of mushrooms could bring in around $350.
The territorial government estimates that it could net millions of dollars for pickers with what is expected to be one of - if not the - best season for picking in the territory's history.
It's not just about the business and entrepreneurial success, said Minoza, but about being able to provide opportunities for people in the Deh Cho region.
"I want to be able to give back to my community," she said. "The NWT has so much potential, coming from Fort Providence and doing this, it may help other people. I hope I can inspire people to just take their ideas and go for it."
