Lawai Valley Nursery

While on Kauai for a wedding, my mom & I stopped by the Kauai Community College (KCC??) farmers market on a whim, and ran across a mushroom stand that LITERALLY sold its last bag of mushrooms as we walked up. Noooo!!! =(Luckily «Kieffer» was super nice, & as he closed up shop, he told us that we could buy mushrooms at his farm in Lawai anytime, along with bananas, papayas & other fruit. Cool! ;-) Kieffer rattled off some directions as he folded up his table & hurried off…& thus began our epic quest in search of Lawai Nursery…
Actually, this place was really easy to find, even for us being totally unfamiliar with the area, hehehe. 0=) From Kaumualii Hwy, we turned up the road heading into the valley (Kua Rd). Look for the – very small – sign stuck in the ground on the highway street-​corner, pointing the way! We passed a few more signs along the long winding road into the valley, & finally saw one last sign posted in front of a driveway to the left… EUREKA! :-D
Up the gravel path into the property, we parked in front of the first greenhouse. «Steve» was finishing some work out back, & came right out to help us. It was pretty obvious that this is not a huge retail-​sales environment, but rather a small working-​farm/​-​nursery, with a couple of greenhouse-​like buildings on the right and a large plot of banana (and other) plants to the left. ;D Love it!
Steve was very nice, though not particularly talkative at first. =) He showed us the grey oyster, pink oyster, & «pioppino» mushrooms (pioppino might be shimeji mushrooms by a different name) that he had for sale, all at $ 5 per half-​pound bag. Oh boy, wish he’d had more of those PINKS, what a beautiful vibrant COLOR… I never knew such a thing existed! ;D I clutched 4 precious bags of mushrooms in my hot little hands, & couldn’t wait to get home to cook them. 0=) Before we left, Steve quickly explained their mushroom-​growing process (I had no many questions!!) and showed us the mushroom house, which was filled with a constant cloud of A/​C & water-​mist.
In the grand scheme of things, Lawai Nursery is a relatively modest little farming business… but for me & my mom (life-​long «townies», hee hee!), this was a bona fide ag-​adventure! 0=) It felt wonderful to get our food from the source, without any middle-man…everyone we met was very nice…& the mushrooms themselves were absolutely fresh, firm and beautiful! And did I mention the PINKS? ;D FABULOUS! They lose most of their color when cooked, but it made a big impact when I gave away as omiage! All 3 varieties of mushrooms were delicious when sauteed in butter, salt & pepper (some with garlic too).simple perfection!