If you’re wondering where the name Maddyland came from, I’ll tell you. In 2010, my wife Annie and I were renting a tiny apartment in North Asheville - and I mean tiny. We searched high and low until we found a 600-square foot cabin at the edge of downtown Marshall for rent, and jumped on it. It was huge! Not really but it was in the sense that we were suddenly surrounded by the forest. Naturally, we then adopted a pound puppy with fluffy ears and white paws and named her Maddy.

That little cabin on a creek was a wonderful place to live, but we didn’t own it, and the landlord wasn’t selling. We wanted our own place. So for what seemed like years, we searched and we searched, got lost, run off, and bug bit. Almost every weekend, the three of us loaded into the car and we’d say, “let’s go find Maddy land.”  Maddy loved to ride with her head out of the window, ears flapping in the wind. And she loved chasing deer on our excursions.

One fateful day in October 2015, we found an old dairy farm in Marshall with a dilapidated, hundred year old farmhouse, a two story smokehouse, a couple of pallet shacks, a pig sty, a chicken coop, one too many enormous black snakes, and a masonry building that had served as the dairy’s milking parlor. Naturally, we named our property Maddyland. The milk parlor became the cornerstone of Maddyland Mushrooms. It’s where the magic happens.

Maddy passed a couple of years ago. It broke our hearts. She was a good dog. I’ll always be grateful for the lessons she taught me and for leading us to our land, and to what has become my passion - cultivating medicinal and gourmet mushrooms with organic substrates, spring water, sunlight, a sense of humor, and love.