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.
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