When Ben Deuling moved to Bozeman in 2017, he planned to get his Ph.D. in microbiology at Montana State University. He didn’t expect to be miserable. He also didn’t expect to become fascinated with growing mushrooms.

“I hated it,” he said of the doctoral program. “I wasn’t bad at it and could have seen it through but I didn’t care about what I was doing.”

But Deuling cared about mushrooms.

After about two years of splitting his time between his Ph.D. program and business planning, Deuling’s Spore Attic has been operational since the end of November. His gourmet mushrooms have been sold directly to local restaurants and at the winter farmers market.