What’s a Yoke?
I’m Yoke… well my name is Christian Przybyla (Prih-zuh-bella), but most of my friends call me Yoke. I am the owner and sole employee of Yoke’s Urban Mushrooms.
I started growing medicinal mushrooms a few years ago when a family member was diagnosed with breast cancer and needed alternative options for treatment. Since then, what was a hobby has exploded into a small business where I do everything from the lab work through harvest and sales.
I graduated from Cal Poly SLO in 2024 with a B.S. in Agricultural Systems Management. I believe that creating my own agricultural business from the ground up has been and will be the most effective way for me to continue that education; after all Cal Poly’s motto is “Learn By Doing”.
There are many interpretations of the word yoke, but the one I find meaningful is “to become joined” which is important to me because the combination of all of God’s creatures inherently does more work, more efficiently, than man could ever dream of doing alone. I grow and harvest my own wood to grow mushrooms on which in turn feeds humans as well as my animals. This cooperation of man and beast is the entire basis of my operation; when man and beast (including plants and fungi) become joined, systems naturally become more efficient.
Yoke’s Urban Mushrooms does everything we can to join the efforts of these creatures to facilitate a sustainable farm to fork operation aimed at improving the health of the soil as well as the health of those living on it.
The Philosophy
We steer towards sustainability by focusing on soil health, growing crops on the soil, and then growing mushrooms on those crops. The Carbon that was stored in the plant is rapidly broken down by the mushroom mycelium and eventually planted strait into the soil where it will produce mushrooms until running out of energy. The Carbon that was buried will then be readily available for the beneficial microbes that increase efficiencies in the soil where future crops will be grown. The majority of land at YUM is not irrigated and only receives annual rainfall which is more than enough to grow the crops on which the mushrooms are grown.