Becky Woods found her love for mushrooms playing in the forest: “I was always into herbal medicines.”
Her passion was ignited near the unincorporated community of Saint Joseph, where she and her siblings and cousins searched for morels in the woods around her grandmother’s home. While taking online courses through Sky House Herb School & Apothecary in 2017-18, the classes on the benefits of mushrooms “really held my interest,” Becky says. That is where the idea for Woods & Stems was born, inside a 24-by-36-foot pole barn where she began cultivating cordyceps for stamina and kidney health, lion’s mane for brain health, turkey tail for immune and gut function, and reishi for overall well-being. “We’ve almost outgrown our space for growing,” says Becky’s wife, Ginger, who co-owns the business and also works in accounts payable at Separation by Design.
To operate Woods & Stems, Becky — a senior IT support technician at Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. — learned more about practical uses for fungi, something she has experience with. Her father, James Woods — whose love of watching owls inspired the company’s avian logo — was battling kidney cancer and treated his symptoms with reishi and cordyceps before passing away in 2020. “People don’t know a lot about mushrooms aside from what you get in the grocery store,” Becky explains. “They’re all wonderful in their own way.”
As the business has expanded online and in retail, so has the couple’s knowledge. “It’s been a challenge to learn about growing. With so much on the market that is hard to trust, doing it right mattered to me. I wanted to be involved in the entire process — growing, extracting, and formulating everything myself,” Becky says. Their business has grown “fast,” she adds, with small-batch products like extracts and mushroom-infused tonics, coffee, and spice blends sold at Social Bird Boutique, Hometown Roots, and Posh, plus at events like Franklin Street Bazaar, Wesselman Woods’ Woodland Wonders, and the Old Courthouse Craft Show. Woods & Stems’ mushroom jerky is exclusively sold at Paul’s Pharmacy, and its mushrooms have found their way onto the menu at Damsel’s Brew Pub (try the beer-battered lion’s mane mushrooms as an appetizer) and dinner plates at West Baden Springs Hotel.
To further mushroom education, the couple hosts cooking classes, including sold-out farm-to-table events at Seton Harvest last July and October — participants feasted on lion’s mane steak and wild mushroom risotto. Try cooking with black pearl mushrooms, Ginger’s favorite, which have umami flavor with peppery and earthy undertones; she recommends them as a meat substitute for pulled pork, tacos, and sloppy joes. Becky prefers the savory, smoky flavor of pink oyster mushrooms, which she describes as “surprisingly bacon-like.”
The Woodses hope to acquire more space to grow their fungi, expand their offerings, and educate more people through classes and events. “People tell us ‘thank you,’ and they appreciate what we’re doing,” Ginger says. “It feels rewarding that you’re out in the community getting people healthy.”
