Ormstown is now home to an organic shiitake mushroom production. Sacha Desautels and Andrée-Anne Talbot started Ferme du Chene Blanc on their wooded 14-hectare lot in 2025 with the goal of preserving the forest while offering mushrooms to the local community.
Desautels is an arborist by trade, and Talbot has been working as a doctor at the Barrie Memorial hospital for close to 15 years. Both have always had deep interest in nature preservation and cultivating their own food.
Shiitakes are originally from east Asia and grow naturally on the Shii tree. In North America they are cultivated on oak. Oak is rare in the region and in-forest cultivation is not particularly productive, so they opted for indoor production. They constructed a building specially designed for mushroom fruiting, processing, and storage. An organic substrate made of fiber rich in carbon is inoculated with shiitake spores and then kept at the perfect humidity and temperature to maximize mushroom fruiting.
Once mature, the mushrooms are harvested and stored in a cold room for a short period of time before they are sold to local farms and restaurants. The farm is currently producing fifty kilograms per month, but their infrastructure has the potential for 500 kg per week.
It has been less than a year since the farm started selling shiitakes, but they are already a big hit with local restaurants and farms. Matthew Wattie at Coop les Jardins de la Résistance says, “Our customers are really happy to be able to buy organic and local mushrooms at our drop-off points. Besides being delicious, they keep really well.” People can also find local shiitakes on the menu at Taverne de la Ferme and hopefully soon in local grocery stores.
When asked about future projects, these growers already have a few ideas though not all are mushroom-related. “We want to dehydrate the mushrooms first, and then we’ll look into producing ready-made meals based on that. We want to cultivate certain tree species like white oak, black locust, and other melliferous trees. We also plan to breed Dutch shepherd dogs,” said Desautels.
They also have land and species preservation at the forefront of their project. “We have set ourselves the goal of protecting and regenerating natural environments, such as the wetlands found on our land, in collaboration with Ambioterra, and the white oak, which grows naturally in our region but has become very rare,” said Desautels. “Our health and resilience in the face of social and environmental upheaval depend on our ability to mobilize and transform our practices.”