Operating on the Edge

In 2011, Margaret Townsend was at her parents’ farm, sitting at their kitchen table and brainstorming with her dad, John Newnan. A Microsoft executive, she was looking at retirement options and was considering a bourbon distillery.

“First, I was interested in a product that uses the farm, where I could get outdoors and do some physical work. Second, I wanted something that would take a lot of research and networking. And third, I wanted it to be a unique, high-end product.”

Her dad mentioned an article he read about a person who was inoculating trees with truffle mycorrhiza. Fourteen years later, Townsend’s 25-acre Newtown Truffiere is one of the largest producing orchards in the country. “I met my criteria in spades,” she laughs.

An adventure

Finding the right location was a no-brainer. Townsend leased her parents’ Scottsville, Kentucky, farm, but all the steps after that have been and are quite the adventure.

For starters, finding information on commercial truffle production is a job. With the industry still in its infancy, chefs in the U.S. typically purchase native truffles from foragers who scour the woods or European species from brokers who import them. Only Townsend and a handful of other intrepid souls were willing to grow the delicacy commercially. The information that was available, especially when she started, was often from Spain, Italy, France and Australia.

One production step does translate from overseas. Trees are a necessity. Truffles are close kin to mushrooms but live underground. Part of a true symbiotic relationship, Townsend describes truffle mycorrhiza as recruiting networks for trees. Mycorrhiza go out beyond the roots and collect nutrients and water. In turn, trees use their leaves for photosynthesis and deliver sugars to the truffles.

Before the trees went in, Townsend, like any good farmer, prepared the soil. Besides subsoiling, even with western Kentucky’s limestone base, it took 40 tons an acre to get the pH up to a truffle-friendly 8.0.

“The farmers around here thought I was nuts,” says Townsend. “I had to convince Southern States Cooperative I did, in fact, know what I was doing before they’d deliver that much lime. I’m this weird dichotomy, this crazy software person who can talk about soil chemistry and how mycorrhiza form relationships, then I have to ask some incredibly dumb questions about farm equipment.

“I had zero farm background,” she adds. “I’d never even had a respectable garden.”

Townsend uses the New Holland 3930, Olga, which her late father bought 27 years ago, to spread the lime. “She’s a workhorse and has great, great reliability. I love her.” She also appreciates Olga’s stability since the land is hilly and she is a fledgling farmer.

While Townsend did have to invest in massive amounts of lime, she got a break with fertilizer. She applied only a touch when the seedlings went in. “Truffles grow on the edge. If we put down lots of fertilizer, the tree won’t think it needs the truffles and will put all its sugars into nut production rather than sending it to the truffles.”

Next came the 4,800 English oak and European hazelnut seedlings, inoculated with Perigord (T. melanosporum) truffle mycorrhiza, the second most coveted species in the world. The intended truffles now co-exist with the native Kentucky Winter White truffles that opportunistically moved into a well-prepared environment. In early 2012, the trees went into the ground.

Transitioning trees

Townsend is now transitioning from hazelnuts to oaks after many farms in the eastern United States have been attacked by European filbert blight. Even though Townsend bought blight-resistant hazelnut seedlings, the disease continues to mutate and attack resistant varieties.

After the seedlings went in, Townsend waited for rain. And waited. Western Kentucky usually averages 50 inches of annual rainfall, but not in 2012. All $100,000 worth of Townsend’s seedlings were about to die. While she planned to install a drip irrigation system later, during the drought, irrigation systems were in such demand she couldn’t even get on a list.

A nurse tank wasn’t an option on 25 acres. Only a baffledtruck could safely get down the steep hills. Thankfully, a local farmer told her about a used fire truck for sale. The 1968 Ford Model 8000, a 1,000-gallon pumper, was just the answer. Even though she now has drip irrigation, she continues to use the fire engine pump to power it. And yes, the fire truck has a name. She’s Bridget. As in Bridge over Watered Truffles with apologies to Simon and Garfunkel.

Townsend also installed a fence around her high-value crop. “It took me three generations of fencing to be able to control the deer.” She welcomes coyotes, however, as well as snakes. They help control the mice and voles that dine on truffles.

Weed control

Once the trees get big enough, there is also year-round weed control and pruning to add to the chore list. She added shallow-rooted clover to reduce competition from grasses.

“You want water to go into the soil, not competing vegetation,” Townsend says. She recommends starting tree pruning at year five when the trees are small and easier to shape. As she was still working full-time, pruning didn’t start in her orchard until the ninth year, making the task far more difficult. Since her orchard is 25 acres, pruning all the trees every year isn’t realistic, so she and her No. 1 employee, Jonathon Gregory, try to prune a third of them each year.

There is also the seven miles of shallow ditching her husband, Steve, dug. Since the underground spores can’t be spread by air, Townsend emulsifies half-rotten truffles in the blender and sprays them in the ditches.

After all the preparation, production starts slowly. Townsend says those in the know usually predict a startup time of five to seven years. In year seven, she had a grand total of eight truffles. Thankfully, her yields continue to increase as her trees mature. With annual costs of $3,000 to $5,000 per acre, there is a significant investment before full production. Fortunately, Perigord truffles sell for $1,000 to $1,200 per pound.

Apparently, sticker shock isn’t a problem. During the December to February truffle season, chefs from Bowling Green, Kentucky, to North Carolina call. “It is absolutely no problem to sell them,” she emphasizes.

However, Townsend insists the potential return is not what keeps her in the truffle business. “I didn’t do this to get rich. I did this to see if I could.”

She adds, “It was a huge opportunity to learn something I knew little about. The intellectual challenge is one of the biggest rewards, bigger than just about anything.” 

There are also the friendships. “I’ve made friends all over the United States: mycologists, other growers, foragers, chefs, dog trainers, all people trying to crack the code on this together.”