- Sometimes the most unexpected finds are growing right beneath our feet.

For thousands of years, functional mushrooms have been used for their healing properties.

Today at Swan Creek Farm, Catherine Brown is cultivating mushrooms to create wellness products using ancient methods in a modern setting.

Producer Teresa Litsky has the story.

[lute music] - I'm a DAOM, which is a doctor of acupuncture and oriental medicine.

- Dr.

Brown began growing herbs in the 1980s.

Today, she's a mushroom farmer.

- I really loved farming.

And so the idea of mushroom farming and having an agritourism is exactly what I wanna do.

- She cultivates over 30 varieties of mushrooms for tinctures, plasters, and extracts.

She also makes coffees, teas, even jerky from her mushrooms, all from her lab and store in Hamptonville.

- We grow on wood, typically hard woods, not manure.

And we're growing these indoors.

So they don't have pests, they need no pesticides.

And functional mushrooms have been a part of Chinese medicine for thousands of years.

And I have actually worked with them for a couple of decades.

- One of the most popular mushrooms is lion's mane.

- And what they discovered is hundreds of compounds in these lion's mane mushrooms, including hirisiums.

- While reishi mushrooms have their own claim to fame.

- It is called the mushroom of immortality.

And what we call in Chinese medicine, calm the shin.

Which if you calm the shin, you can sleep at night.

So our mushroom farm actually produces mushrooms from the very beginning.

- Capturing all those wonderful benefits from each mushroom is an art unto itself.

- We process using alcohol and then water extraction.

And when you do this, you get the full spectrum of all the compounds from the mushrooms.

- Oh, hi.

- Dr.

Brown opened her lab and store to the public in 2024.

- And they can come here and they can actually see us growing the mushrooms organically.

- From that point forward, we were sold.

'Cause I'm a believer in holistic medicines, if you will, homeopathic type of things.

- Including new takes on popular foods.

- I come for the coffees.

It's got a different flavor to it.

And then, you know, people may think, "Oh, mushroom coffee."

There is the influence of mushroom flavor is minimal in there with the different things, herbs and stuff like that that get put into there.

It's just the health benefits.

- And we've got six different varieties and we have six different flavors of mushroom jerky - Oh, wow.

Got a little kick.

- It's got a little kick.

If you've never had mushroom jerky, hands down, this is phenomenal.

You would not know you were eating a mushroom and the flavors, the textures is awesome.

- Just as sought after are the medicinal herbs in her apothecary.

- Where she's leaning into her doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine.

- You back for some of your herbs?

- Yes, ma'am.

- Our apothecary has almost 100 remedies that are used in Chinese medicine, but for self-care.

- I am a brain tumor survivor.

- Kidney Qi helps to bring up your energy.

- You experience a lot of fatigue, a lot of cognition problems, brain fog.

I would sleep a lot.

But when I take these, I actually have energy to do my day-to-day chores.

It helps me to stay healthy.

I've actually mentioned this to my oncologist and they are fine with me taking this.

- Which is important for customers to have access to, especially right in their own backyard.

- Honestly, to have this in Yakon County is a goldmine.

(upbeat music) - Swan Creek Farm is located at 1736 Swan Creek Road in Hamptonville.

They're open Friday and Saturday from 10 to two.

For more information, give them a call at 336-448-3371.