Driving down a red dirt road just mauka of the Kilauea National Wildlife Refuge on the Garden Isle, mushroom purveyor Philly White watches carefully for a narrow opening in the verdant overgrowth on the side of the road. He makes his turn and pulls into a driveway shaded by monkeypod and kamani trees. Sporting a white tank top, a fishhook necklace and a tattoo that snakes down his left arm, Philly saunters over to a shipping container that serves as his office, laboratory and storage space. Two shade houses stand side by side across the lawn. Inside the shade houses, clear plastic bags of straw are stacked neatly on shelves and clusters of organic pink oyster, blue oyster and shitake mushrooms cling to the bags like delicate, fluted flowers.

Philly's company, Kauai Fungi, is one of a mere handful of mushroom producers in Hawai'i and the only one on Kaua'i. And while many other businesses have been retracting, Kauai Fungi bloomed in 2011, producing about 400 to 500 pounds of mushrooms a month.

"Oyster mushrooms have become everyone's favorite, so we're really focusing on them," Philly says. "All the restaurants love themóRoy's, Barracuda and Hukilau." In fact, Matt Dela Cruz, executive chef at Roy's Poipu Bar & Grill, is one of Philly's oldest and most loyal customers.

"His mushrooms are great," says Dela Cruz. "They're very versatile, mild, not too woodsy. I use them with every type of protein that I have. They're all over my menu." One of Dela Cruz's favorite recent preparations, a prosciutto-wrapped beef tenderloin with a foi gras Madeira sauce, is topped with a combination of Philly's blue oyster mushrooms and golden beets mixed with a Hawaiian wine vinaigrette.

Originally from Oregon, Philly began hunting wild mushroom as a child with his uncle in the 1970s and has been fascinated by fungi ever since. In his twenties, Philly became serious about mycology, the study of fungi, and enrolled in classes with Paul Stamets, founder of Fungi Perfecti in Olympia, Washington and mycology instructor for over for 30 years.

Philly brought his knowledge of mushrooms to Kaua'i in 2007 and immediately started farming. After two years of solo fungi farming, amateur mycologist Michael Brodin joined Philly as the cultivation manager in August 2011, bringing the firm's workforce to two full-time and two part-time employees. Originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, Michael is now running the day-to-day operations.

"Everyone makes jokes about magic mushrooms, but I tell everyone all mushrooms are magic," says a whimsical Brodin. "Every time I go in the shade house and see all these beautiful forms, the colors, the shapes, the way they express themselves in each individual mushroom, to me it's like music. People always say they're like flowers; I say they are the flowers of fungi."

Philly has taken his talents into the lab where he initiates the mushroom growing process by inoculating sterilized rye grain with the mushroom mycelium, the vegetative part of the fungus. Philly orders mushroom mycelium just as a gardener would order seeds. "You can buy certain strains that are compatible with your climate," he says. "We do warm weather strains here. Even in the oyster mushroom family, there are strains that can grow near freezing."

Michael continues the process by packing organic oat straw into barrels and dropping them into 160 degree water for an hour and ten minutes to pasteurize the straw. Once the straw drains and cools, he mixes in the inoculated rye berries by kneading and massaging them into the straw. The mycelium will use the straw as a food source and begin breaking it down. Michael then packs the straw into two-gallon, clear plastic bags. After sealing the bags tight, he makes 30 holes in each bag. "We do our best to keep the holes sterile," Michael says. "The process is really handcrafted from the planting up to the picking‹everything is just Philly and I."

Perforations in the bag signal the mycelium to fruit. The mushrooms, the fruiting body of the fungus, begin to grow on the outside of the plastic bag. Once the bags are packed and placed in the shade house, it takes one week to two months until harvest, depending on the mushroom strain. Pink oysters are ready to pick a week after planting, but shitake mushrooms take at least two months from the time of initial inoculation, and must be specially grown on organic bricks made from locally sourced ironwood chips and hardwood sawdust.

Philly takes pride in his business's emphasis on sustainability and his commitment to organic farming and recycling. At the north shore operation, all the equipment is powered with used vegetable oil collected from local restaurants. The plastic bags have a lifespan of about two months, but Philly says it won't be long before compostable "biobags" will be affordable. There are no chemicals used in the growing process, at any point. In fact, all the mushrooms need once they're planted is water.

"The first flush of mushrooms are the biggest and the healthiest," explains Philly. "When it gets to the point where it's not worth keeping them, then the bags are composted." Farmers pick up the used bags of wheat straw and use the material for mulch. "We do custom soil mixes and we give this product back to farmers who use it to inject beneficial fungi into their soil," continues Philly. "All this material is free. It's not wasted. It's going right back into building topsoil for the island."

In 2011, Kaua'i County recognized Kauai Fungi's efforts to create jobs in the community by giving them an agricultural grant that allowed them to build their second 100-foot shade house. "It was pretty exciting to have them believe in what we're doing," says Philly. "Our heart and soul is in farming, growing food for the community." Philly offers field trips to area elementary students and he invites high school students to work for him after school hours to learn about mushrooms.

Once the mushrooms are harvested, getting them to market quickly is essential and tasked to Cultivate, a local produce distribution service that markets and delivers between 80 and 100 pounds of Kauai Fungi mushrooms twice a week to restaurants around the island. In addition to supplying restaurants, Kauai Fungi's specialties are available to the community at the Kapa'a, Waipa and Hanalei farmers' markets.

Philly is optimistic about Kauai Fungi's future as he sees his company continuing to expand. The company is now shipping mushrooms to Maui, where the demand is great, and eventually Philly plans to expand to O'ahu. "As our company grows, we will continue to focus on the Slow Food movement with our commitment to organic farming, permaculture and sustainability," he says.