The seed for Eben Bayer’s big idea — an idea that would eventually put him on the Forbes “30 Under 30 list” — was planted when he was just a kid growing up on a small farm in South Royalton, Vermont.
Every spring, he would shovel wood chips onto the conveyor belt of a 20-foot evaporator that turned sap into maple syrup. But sometimes large, white, damp clumps would turn up in the wood chips and jam up the operation. The clumps were mycelium, the root-like threads of fungi that grow underground and give rise to mushrooms.
At the time, mycelium was an annoyance. But years later, Bayer thought back to the mycelium in the wood chip pile while trying to come up with an idea for an “inventor’s studio” class at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
“I was like, ‘Hey, that’s kind of unique. Maybe I could use that,’” he said.
