By: Shanice Hernandez
In the El Paso desert, a family farm has become a meeting ground for science, spirit, and creativity. Proof that healing can grow anywhere.
Aixarret Hernandez and Maximilian Esparza, founders of EP Mushroom Co., and sisters Aixarret and Athziry Hernandez of Border Grove Farm embody beautiful collision of science, culture, and healing.
“I was always into biology and the natural world,” Aixarret Hernandez says. “When I moved to California to study marine biology in 2020, I became utterly obsessed with fungi. She questioned why she was never taught about the benefits of fungi in her hometown of El Paso.
That curiosity quickly became a calling. While diving deep into the realm of fungal biotechnology, Hernandez explored fungi’s health benefits, as well as their ability to be used to make biodegradable materials, fabrics, even furniture. After learning that psilocybin mushrooms were being studied to treat PTSD, depression, and chronic pain, she wanted to bring this knowledge back to her hometown to share.
Her first successful harvest was oyster mushrooms that came from a kit bought at Culture Shrooms in Long Beach, California. “The day they popped out of my grow block, I had an hour call with my dad about starting a mushroom farm in El Paso,” she says. “He was super supportive.”
The desert then became her lab. Along with her sister, Aixarret, and future collaborator, Max, she built two connected spaces: EP Mushroom Co., focused on sustainable mushroom cultivation, and Border Grove Farm, a regenerative plot where herbs, pecan trees, and chickens thrive together.
“In the Chihuahuan Desert, mushrooms symbolize resilience and regeneration,” Hernandez says. “Mushrooms serve as a reminder of what’s beneath our feet and the mycelium networks that connect and sustain all life.” Once a mushroom block stops producing, the family returns it to the soil, becoming the start of something new.
The farm has become a gathering place of science, culture and healing. “People from all walks of life come through,” Hernandez says. “Older señoras looking for natural healing when western medicine has failed them, chefs who want to work with such fantastic food, since mushrooms are hard to come by in the desert. To artists and educators visiting to explore the intersection between ecology and creativity.”
For Hernandez, mushroom growing isn’t just farming, it’s a relationship. “You can’t force fungi. They require patience, rhythm, and respect. It’s agricultural, scientific and deeply artistic all at once.”
Mushrooms, she says, teach us that decay is not an ending, but a transformation. “That lesson feels especially powerful here in the desert, where life often looks still but is constantly regenerating beneath the surface.”
Entering into Border Grove captures your senses. You’ll smell earth, herbs, and the rich scent of various mushrooms fruiting. It’s quiet, meditative and grounding. “You watch these living things breathe,” she says. “It’s a practice of presence.”
The purpose of El Paso Mushroom farm and Border Grove, according to Hernandez, is to remind people that healing the planet starts with healing our relationship to it. “Fungi teaches interconnectedness and many other lessons.” Through food, education and community, their mission is to bring awareness to El Paso and beyond.
Mushrooms aren’t just a blip in the culture, they are shifting it. “People are starting to realize nature is for us, not against us,” Hernandez says. “Mushrooms have been around for millions of years, and we’re actually more closely related to them than to plants. They’ve been used in Chinese medicine forever, but only now are people catching on to what they can really do.”
That growing awareness stretches far beyond food. Fungi are reshaping everything from packaging, fashion to even mental health. “I’ve worked with mycelium leather, biodegradable materials, plant-based meats. It’s the beginning of a fungal renaissance.”
For Hernandez and her family, they are growing more than food. They’re growing knowledge they can pass on to anyone willing to learn.
