Meet Chris Farley

Chris was born and raised in Northern California, where the fields, forests, rivers, lakes, mountains, streams, meadows, and ponds were always his back yard. As a kid his main goal in life was to spend as much time as possible outdoors. That goal has not changed. In 2008, he turned to agriculture as a full-time occupation. He managed small farms, Apple Hill orchards, greenhouses, kept honeybees, and leased and operated the late Amigo Bob Cantisano’s Organic Farm in the hills of Grass Valley. Amigo Bob’s sole purpose in life was the pursuit and proliferation of high-quality food production. Amigo Bob was a California legend and powerhouse influence in the field of organic food production. Several years later, Chris' daughter, Maybelle, was born and the never ending, demanding, all-consuming chores of farming collided with the new responsibilities of fatherhood, and lead him in search of a new path.Three months later, Chris began to hear whispers of mushrooms in the hills. He was at the Bear Valley Market on Highway 49 and overheard a conversation about morels in Georgetown, California. He told a couple friends who he knew had been hunting mushrooms for a few years. A week later Chris and friends were hiking all over Stumpy Meadows with Maybelle in tow every day.  Fast forward, he has spent the majority of Spring and Fall seasons in search of edible mushrooms up and down the state of California. Chris and his family have spent the last four years living off grid at the base of Mount Shasta. He hikes thousands of miles annually (with the vast majority of them being on and around Mount Shasta) in the pursuit of edible wild mushrooms and other edible plants.