Having just finished our final market of the year at Surrey Urban Farmers' Market (big shout out and thanks to the organisers and all the wonderful people we met there, this year!), we had the honour of being interviewed by a trio of students working on a local business project. Amongst many other great questions they asked, they wondered about the name of our company; "Why 'Moxie'?"
'Moxie Mushrooms' was on a shortlist of names during the formation of the corporation. Firstly, having read an excess of Tolkien in our youths, we're suckers for alliteration! So, right off the bat, we were leaning towards anything beginning with 'M'... 'Mushrooms'. Secondly, we're a family of immigrants, so the Americana origins of the word 'Moxie' spoke to our immigrant roots, with the connotations of nerve, verve and wits to overcome adversity. That applies as much to us as to the mushrooms we grow! The steam locomotive in our logo blowing out a cloud of mushrooms is the 'engine' of our operations. We love our steampunk, and salute the moxie involved in pioneering train travel across North America - dangerous work typically undertaken by immigrants forging a new life in the New World, one sleeper at a time. A lot of our equipment is 'steampunk'd' together, using found, recycled, repurposed items, materials and available spaces in our locale to construct fruiting chambers, growing beds and media, shelving - even temperature and humidity controls. With these techniques, we've been able to keep startup costs low and minimise the impact of our operations on the environment. Moxie at its best!
We didn't even know it at the time, but the popular use of the word 'moxie' is derived from a soft drink brand (image below), many of the purported medicinal claims for which can currently be attributed to some of our own cultivated mushrooms. And those brand colours are much like our own, too. Pure coincidence!
According to Wikipedia, the most likely origin of 'moxie' is an Abenaki word that means "dark water", found in lake and river names in Maine where the founder of the beverage brand was born and raised.
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