S8 Ep12: Nature's Nutraceuticals: How Medicinal Mushrooms Are Transforming Natural Medicine with Aaron Hodgins Davis
“In the case of a business, pick a few ideas, do them well, and scale them up instead of doing a whole bunch of things at a very small scale.” —Aaron Hodgins Davi
The medicinal mushroom industry is primed for exponential growth as research continues to uncover the vast health benefits of fungal powerhouses. Research found that mushrooms support brain, immune, cardiovascular, and digestive health in ways no other food or supplement can match. As public interest in preventative healthcare rises, medicinal mushrooms are emerging as highly effective and easily accessible wellness all-stars.
Hence, many forward-thinking farmers are now helping to bring these adaptive allies from the forest to the forefront by making high-quality mushroom products available nationwide. One of them is Aaron Hodgins Davis. Aaron is the founder and operator of Hodgins Harvest, a certified organic mushroom farm in Hudson Valley. Through Hodgins Harvest, Aaron cultivates medicinal mushrooms organically and sustainably while educating communities about their health benefits.
This interview offers fascinating insights into the past, present, and promising future of the medicinal mushroom industry. Listen in as Justine and Aaron talk about the wide-ranging health benefits of mushrooms supported by research, their adaptogenic properties and healing applications, and their potential in the preventive wellness industry. They also offer valuable advice for balancing a side hustle with a day job, maintaining focus, keeping realistic expectations, and overcoming challenges as an entrepreneur.
Connect with Aaron:
Aaron Hodgins Davis is the founder and operator of Hodgins Harvest, a certified organic mushroom farm based in the Hudson Valley region of New York. As the chief fungi enthusiast at Hodgins Harvest, Aaron oversees all aspects of growing and producing medicinal mushrooms such as Lion's Mane, Reishi, Turkey Tail, and Shiitake.
With over five years of experience in the mushroom farming industry, Aaron is passionate about cultivating mushrooms using organic and sustainable practices. He is also dedicated to educating communities about the health benefits of medicinal mushrooms through growing kits, extracts, and community outreach.
Prior to starting Hodgins Harvest, Aaron worked in the documentary film industry for 15 years. He founded Hodgins Harvest as a side hobby that has now grown into a full-time career focused on the future of medicinal mushroom farming.
When not working on the farm, Aaron enjoys foraging for wild mushrooms, cooking with culinary varieties, and staying up to date on the latest mushroom research. He aims to continue expanding Hodgins Harvest's organic mushroom operations in the years to come.
Episode Highlights:
01:30 Hobby Turned Full-Time Business
02:49 Balancing Side Hustle and Career
07:25 Overcoming Challenges
12:07 Medicinal Properties of Mushrooms
16:40 Scaling Up Operations
Tweets:
Discover the healing magic of medicinal mushrooms! Listen in as @jreichman and Hodgins Harvest Founder, Aaron Hodgins Davis share insights into these adaptogens' untapped wellness potential. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #Season8 #HodginsHarvest #mushrooms #umami #organicfarming #functionalmed #naturalremedies
Inspirational Quotes:
03:01 “There are so many people who haven't realized what it is they really want to do. Not everybody connected the dots the same way.” —Justine Reichman
03:39 “Success can mean so many things. It doesn't have to mean that you're making tons of money, it can mean that you're having an impact.” —Justine Reichman
04:18 “If you're running a small business, you need to survive. You need to do that bare minimum to actually support yourself and the business.” —Aaron Hodgins Davis
06:44 “In the case of a business, pick a few ideas, do them well, and scale them up instead of doing a whole bunch of things at a very small scale.” —Aaron Hodgins Davis
07:28 “Just because you're running a small business, and it's going well right now, it doesn't mean you're going to have those same sales six months from now.” —Aaron Hodgins Davis
08:04 “Be realistic about where you're gonna be in six months; don't expect everything to grow or everything to stay the same.” —Aaron Hodgins Davis
09:38 “With any business, there will be road bumps for sure.” —Aaron Hodgins Davis
18:16 “Look for organic mushrooms and organic food in general.” —Aaron Hodgins Davis
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman. With me today is Aaron Hodgins Davis from Hodgins Harvest in New York.
Welcome, Aaron. So great to have you here.
Aaron Hodgins Davis: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Justine Reichman: My pleasure. So for those that are not familiar with you and Hodgins Harvest, if you just give me a short little intro to what title you go by, and a little bit about the company.
Aaron Hodgins Davis: I have a business card somewhere that says Aaron Hodgins Davis Chief Fungi Enthusiast. I'm the Founder and Operator of Hodgins Harvest, so we're a certified organic mushroom farm. We're based in the Hudson Valley of New York State. These days, we primarily grow medicinal mushrooms. So Lion's Mane, Reishi, Turkey Tail and Cordyceps. And we also produce extracts out of those medicinal mushrooms. And we create mushroom grow kits that are different types of varieties, specifically, culinary mushrooms, Lion's Mane, oyster and pink oyster that people can grow in their own homes to eat.
Justine Reichman: Wow. So why mushrooms?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: Why mushrooms? This is a second career for me. I think it's sort of a homecoming in terms of my interests. I worked for about 15 years in the documentary film business.
Justine Reichman: Talk separately.
Aaron Hodgins Davis: Yeah. This business was my escape from that business. I enjoyed that industry a lot. But my role essentially became doing work in front of a computer in the later half of my career, and that drove me a little bit bonkers. I think I'm like a border collie. I need to just move and be engaged, and be out and doing things. So somewhere in that period of time where I was realizing I really didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. I started falling in love with mushrooms just as a culinary, as something to eat. Started with oyster mushrooms, and then went on the lion's mane kind of the woods, and I started cooking with them a lot. I'm the type of guy that when I love something, I have to create it and do it myself. And so I went out and I got a grow kit, and I started growing mushrooms as a hobby using a grow kit that's exactly like the ones we sell now. I just essentially scaled it up. It went from one grow kit to a couple different growth kits to a little hobbyist grow 10. My daughter was involved in this as well. She's 14 now. She was probably about seven or eight when my interest in motion was first started. So it's been a fun thing to share with her. And it grew from a hobby into sort of a part time side gig into now a full time business for me.
Justine Reichman: That sounds amazing. What a way to be able to work to your interests and your passion, and create a lifestyle for yourself. Exactly. I totally agree. I couldn't agree more, but there's so many people I speak to that it's not about that, or they haven't had that opportunity or that moment when they realized what it is they really want to do. Not everybody connected the dots the same way. And so it's inspiring to hear from you and from other folks that really do follow their passion and create a meaningful, fulfilling and successful lifestyle for themselves through their passion.
Aaron Hodgins Davis: Totally. I wouldn't declare success just yet. I mean, we're still very much a small and growing company. But we're doing well now. And hopefully, I just get to do this for the rest of my life because I love it.
“Success can mean so many things. It doesn't have to mean that you're making tons of money, it can mean that you're having an impact.” —Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: I think success can mean so many things. It doesn't have to mean that you're making tons of money. It can mean that you're having an impact or introducing people to mushrooms, you're educating them on how to integrate them into their lives, both medicinally and culinary. So when I see what you're doing, and I see that you've aligned your passion with what you're doing, you're making it accessible for people to do on their own, that seems success. So it's the baby steps until you get to the big steps. But then, all the little steps of success get you there.
Aaron Hodgins Davis: Sure. I would say, yeah, success definitely does not just mean money. But if you're running a small business, you need to survive. You need to do that bare minimum to actually support yourself with the business. So this business has been in existence for five years. And in the earlier, certainly in the first four years, I needed the old career in addition to it to survive. We go through these phases and we had some good times, we had some bad times, but we've sort of evened it out now. I can really just focus on growing mushrooms and teaching people about mushrooms and doing whatever.
Aaron Hodgins Davis: What do you think was the greatest challenge about balancing both Hodgins Harvest and your old career so that you could both be good at your job and be able to take Hodgins Harvest to the next level.
“If you're running a small business, you need to survive. You need to do that bare minimum to actually support yourself and the business.” —Aaron Hodgins Davis
Aaron Hodgins Davis: I hope I was so good at my job while I was doing this. The biggest thing was time. It certainly pulled up plenty of weeks where I probably hit 100 hours of work just between the two of them, and then being a dad on top of that. I think any small business owner can probably identify with this issue when you're getting started off. If you don't have some big source of funding to get started, you're just scraping by and doing it at a small scale and doing it in addition to whatever is actually paying your bills. So yeah, it was a challenge, for sure. And it's still a challenge, but we're in a pretty good place now. And hopefully, we will be 10 years from now.
Justine Reichman: Is there one thing that you might recommend to that founder that might be tuning in today that is trying to do something similar, balance his side hustle or his new innovation alongside his job?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: I have great advice for that person. It's the thing that's allowed me to get some version of success with this business. And that is focus. When I started the business, this was a function of my personality. There's just all these shiny things, right? It's like, oh, yeah, I want to eat that type of mushroom. I want to do this product and that product, and this. I knew that I had about 15 different things that I was doing, and I wasn't really good at any one thing. So what I've learned to do despite my natural tendency to take on more than I can handle is just pick a few things that you're good at. And this doesn't even have to be advice for a business owner. It's advice for anybody. Pick a few things. Don't just be drawn to every new thing and go on that. Pick a few things, focus and do those well. And in the case of a business, in the case of my business, quite a few ideas to pick a few things. Do them well, and scale them up instead of a whole bunch of things at a very small scale.
Justine Reichman: With that said, is there something that you might tell them about when you knew it was right to leave the job behind and go full force in Hodgins Harvest.
Aaron Hodgins Davis: I can tell you what happened to me. I left the old career and went full force on Hodgins Harvest in 2020, which is really only a year after I started it. It was going well for a while. I went about a year and a half without doing any work in the film business, and then it all just came crashing down. Just because you're running a small business and it's going well right now doesn't mean you're going to have those same sales six months from now. In my mind at that time, I thought it was only going to grow because all I had watched was, oh, look, we did this much in sales. And then we did this much in sales. And then we did this much in sales. Next year, it's gonna be like five times that much. So it didn't work out that way. Everything kind of went downhill for a while, and we had to crash and burn. I went running and screaming back to my old career and got some more work to get us through that period of time. So coming out the other end and looking back, if you're going through a good period with the business, just be realistic about where you're gonna be in six months. Don't just expect everything to grow or everything to stay the same.
“In the case of a business, pick a few ideas, do them well, and scale them up instead of doing a whole bunch of things at a very small scale.” —Aaron Hodgins Davis
Aaron Hodgins Davis: And so now that you have this business, you said about what five years, four years, what are you most hopeful for?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: What am I most hopeful for? We're just going to continue to grow. I have a plan laid out for us. I think last year has been really trying for us. So we'll go in reverse a year. Things were going pretty well a year ago, June of last year, and the original location of the farm, including my house, all burned down. The whole thing burns.
Justine Reichman: Well, wait, hold on. How did this fire happen?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: It was an electrical farm. It was an old house. I won't bore you with the details. But essentially, there's some old wires in the wall. They were signs within the month before the fire that happened, I probably should pay closer attention to. It made a lot more sense after the fire happened, but it was essentially old wiring. So check your wiring in your house and be careful with it. And yeah, so that put us out on the streets, and we couldn't use that property for the farm anymore. So yes, about what am I hopeful for? We've been set up in a temporary setup. Since September, we got set up and we're operating. We now have a new location picked out and we're on the verge of committing to and signing the lease. And what I'm hopeful for is that in the next year, we just get moved in there, everything goes smoothly and goes according to plan. I don't see any reason that it wouldn't. But with any business, there will be road bumps for sure.
Justine Reichman: That's exciting, too. It's unfortunate what happened, but equally sounds like there's a really good plan in place that you've created. So wishing you lots of success on that. So tell me about these mushrooms. Tell me about what you're growing, and why you're growing the ones you choose. A little bit about what you're hopeful for for your community? What you're hoping to offer them?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: So when I first started the business, I was all in on culinary mushrooms, just growing mushrooms you can eat. I still love all the mushrooms that you can eat and of the woods are the forage mushrooms that we don't even grow. Oysters are like meat potatoes to me. They're in our dinners a couple two, three nights a week. And that's really what I wanted to focus the business on initially. I had started using medicinal mushrooms, actually, long before I even started eating, we're loving culinary types of mushrooms. I started with some Chaga and Reishi. They were sort of in the background and not the main interest. I continued to use them, and we started growing some medicinal mushrooms. And as the business evolved, we started making medicinal mushroom extracts and they became a bigger part of my life. And there was basically a choice. At one point I talked, I said something about focus. And what I was doing was running a farm that grew, produced and sold it to people. We were doing at most 10 Farmers Market's a week in the New York City area and suburbs, which in and of itself was kind of a big, messy, complicated business run. And then in addition to the whole Farmers market, fresh mushroom side of things, we started small and started growing the online more shelf stable products side of the business, which was mainly the mushroom extracts, some dried products, and the mushroom grow kits. And I got to a point with it, where like I said, I can't do 15 things at once. I need to pick a lane and stick to it. And for me, I decided to pick medicinal mushrooms and stick with these four core medicinal mushrooms that we can grow ourselves, and that I use on a regular basis myself.
“Be realistic about where you're gonna be in six months; don't expect everything to grow or everything to stay the same.” —Aaron Hodgins Davis
Justine Reichman: So my question for you with regards to medicinal mushrooms is, what is your experience? How do you have all that knowledge to work and create something that is medicinal? You have to bring people in, did you study it?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: I studied it on my own. I didn't study at a university. Every bit of my knowledge about mushrooms is gleaned from YouTube, Facebook, a few actual hardcopy books, and a whole lot of doing it, screwing it up and learning from our mistakes, which is the best way to learn. It's the slowest and the hardest, the most expensive way to learn, but it's what really teaches you things. So yeah, I had no formal training. And I learned about medicinal mushrooms. Most of my knowledge now about medicinal mushrooms comes from reviewing scientific literature that's coming out and reading it in a field like medicinal mushrooms, where you're essentially growing them for the beneficial compounds that are in them. I think the best way to get knowledge about that subject is through scientific literature. I'm reading and constantly have an eye on newspapers that are coming out reading about both studies that are on the effects of humans, what affects the various compounds have, and then also different extraction techniques. Because that's all evolving knowledge, and there's a lot of new studies coming out every year. There's a good amount of anecdotal evidence thrown in there as well. Medicinal mushrooms have definitely had a positive influence on my life. The story I like to tell is about Reishi. So it's the second one I started taking, but I stopped taking Chaga a while ago. So Reishi is kind of the one I've been taking for the longest. I think in the winter, maybe 10 years ago. I had heard that Reishi could help with spring allergies, and I had spring allergies as I started developing them in my early 20's. I never had them as a kid.
And for a while in my 20's, I had them every year pretty bad. And so I started taking Reishi Mushrooms, probably in January or February of that year. And the spring came, and I still got my allergies. I was like, oh, well, it didn't work. But I'm gonna keep taking Reishi because I think it's good for me anyways. So I kept taking it. And then the next year came around, the next spring came around, and I had not one single bit of spring out. They were just gone. I think I was generally focused on other aspects of my health during that time as well. I can't credit it 100% to Rishi. But I think that was the main thing or certainly one of the things that got rid of those allergies, and I haven't had him since.
Justine Reichman: There are trials or within the publications that you read that are scientific that talk about the impact of these various mushrooms on our health and how they impact it.
Aaron Hodgins Davis: Yeah, there's thousands. And the research goes back decades, especially in Asia. A lot of these mushrooms are just being introduced to the Western world or in the last 10, 15, 20 years are being introduced to the Western world. But they've been around in China, Japan for millennia. So there's some links on our website. I can send you some links to post with this episode as well. But there's a ton of great research, double blind placebo controlled human studies on the various positive impacts of medicinal mushrooms.
Justine Reichman: Is there one or two stories that you could share with us about the impact that you've read about or that people have had with your mushrooms that correlate to the studies you've read?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: So are you saying that a study that I have in mind?
Justine Reichman: For example, you sell lots of mushrooms, grow kits and these different medicinal options for people. Is there anything that you can match up from your clientele that buys your products that connects directly with some of the studies you're reading?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: I get emails all the time from people about how lion's mane, Reishi or Turkey Tail has helped them out. Those are my favorite emails to read. I have a story about somebody who has worked with Hodgins Harvest on occasion, a guy named Amon. I think he'll be okay with me telling the story. He was kicked in the head by a cow accidentally at one point working on a farm. He's had issues with concussions since then, so he started taking Lion's Mane to help them. And he said, it's the only thing that was consistently helping with it. And then I got an email the other day from a woman who said that her husband's memory and brain fog. She was actually kind of upset because her tincture was stuck in the mail. It's taken a long time to get to her. She said, it's the only thing that helps him out, and we need it. And we're going on seven days without it, and a center of a tincture as fast as I could because of that. But she was grateful. And she really enjoyed the product. And honestly, like those experiences, if I didn't have those types of interactions where I hear about the real world effects of it, if I was just reading studies that are online that I'm sort of disconnected from, I don't think I would stay motivated to just grow medicinal mushrooms. But those stories pop up all the time. And it's really, really nice to hear from people.
Justine Reichman: That's awesome. I'd love to hear that. I have allergies, I have sinusitis. Ages ago, I took Topamax for migraines, and then I created some short term memory loss. So I need to get on the bandwagon here.
Aaron Hodgins Davis: A lion's mane is what you need.
Justine Reichman: I think we're gonna need to get that, and I'm going to need to grow some mushrooms in my garden. I think that's what's up next. I know you've been working on this. And you focus now, as you say, on medicinal mushrooms. And given there's other people out there doing medicinal mushrooms, what makes yours more revolutionary or different from the others?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: Nothing. Nothing makes them more revolutionary or different from the others. They are exactly like the others that people grow. And they're all good. You should get them from any source. You don't have to get them from us. But we are a source that we go certified organic. We're a certified organic farm. We had our inspection last week. We're growing them in the United States right here, local ish. Certainly the people around here, but local to the entire country compared to a lot of mushrooms that are mass produced in China. So those are the things that I think kind of differentiate us. But yeah, however you get them, I would encourage you to look for organic mushrooms and organic food in general. Buying from us or buying from someone else doesn't matter.
Justine Reichman: So going forward, if you look three, five years ahead, what do you see for Hodgins Harvest?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: Three to five years ahead? I'm just trying to get through the next few months. Hopefully in five years, we will have just continued to scale up our operations, and we're producing a ton of Lion's Mane, Cordyceps, Turkey Tail and Reishi, selling them in all the various forms that I'd like to sell them in. The Grow Kits, we're going to continue to do as long as people are buying them. I enjoy doing those two, but I think the focus is those four medicinal mushrooms. I'm sure that they'll still be a part of the business five years from now.
Justine Reichman: So for those folks, the ones that are on the East Coast, New York, Nyack, Rockland County, and even globally, where can people find your product to buy it?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: The best place is hodginsharvest.com. You buy from us or any other small business on our website. It's way better than buying from us on Amazon where our products are also sold. Amazon just brings in so much business. We kind of have to sell them there. I'm not a fan of being beholden to a corporate giant, but I got to play ball with them. So you can get them there too if you just want that friendship, and we have a few places locally. So our products cluster farm New Jersey, I'm pronouncing that wrong, but whatever. I don't know how they pronounce it down there. But yeah, they sell our products. A couple other places locally. We actually do a fair amount to a place called Faire Online, mainly our grow kits are sold in Brick-And-Mortar stores all over the country, and a lot of things like garden centers and stuff. If you email me, if you email someone here and Hodgins Harvest, we can tell you if there's a location near you.
Justine Reichman: That's so great. So anything outside of the East Northeast corridor? Are you in New York City, for example, even though that's the Northeast Corridor. Are you in California?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: Yeah.
Justine Reichman: Global or your national is what you're saying through Faire?
Aaron Hodgins Davis: Mainly in the United States. I'm not aware of any place internationally that has our products. But yeah, we are all over the country, in Brick-And-Mortar stores. But it's not like a chain. All of these small independent retailers that buy our products online, and we ship them to them wholesale. If you're into buying, showing up and buying a Grow Kit locally at a store near you, I can say that you can email us, and we can tell you if there's a store near you.
Justine Reichman: Thank you so much for joining me today. I learned so much, and I can't wait to get the Grow Kit. I need something for my allergy so we'll have to coordinate that. Thanks so much.
