Tampa Firefighter’s Garage Farm Biz Is Mushrooming; Story Comes To National TV

Home-Based Rags-to-Riches Tale Featured On RFD-TV

LUTZ, FL — Tampa Bay firefighter Joe Iovino doesn’t like mushrooms. Well, he didn’t, once upon a time. That’s before he turned a home garage hobby into a booming farm business growing gourmet mushrooms for local grocers, restaurants and farmers markets.

A few years back, Iovino was looking for something to do in his spare time – you know, when he wasn’t driving the firetruck. His wife loved (expensive) gourmet mushrooms. Iovino thought they were a waste. He’d heard about people growing them at home. A quick Google led him to YouTube videos. The process seemed simple enough.

Iovino had a knack and soon mastered the craft. And now that puts him and his farm, Cactus Hat Mushrooms, squarely where mushrooms don’t like to be: In the spotlight, as the subject of an episode of the RFD-TV Network’s popular series Where The Food Comes From.

It’s a rarity for the show – an episode filmed in its own backyard. Where The Food Comes From is based in Tampa, where producer and host Chip Carter launched it in January 2022. Now in Season 4, WTFCF travels the country visiting farms and making other stops along the food chain to show all the invisible hands that keep us fed.

Iovino’s home looks something like a sci-fi scenario meets a high school laboratory. The ‘shrooms – exotic varieties like lion’s mane, blue oyster and shitake – look like aliens themselves.

“When I started growing mushrooms, I found out I actually do love ‘em,” Iovino says. “We’re all used to the typical white mushroom we get from the supermarket, and those have their place, but I never liked them. But you can do all kinds of things with these crazy varieties that are just delicious.”

A covered shed outdoors holds the raw materials and an assembly line to pack poly bags with compost that will then be laced with… well, mushroom juice, for lack of a better descriptive, a combination of growth medium and spores that Iovino cooks up in a cleanroom lab that was once a guestroom. They grow in a carefully controlled climate in an enclosure that once served as the Iovino family room. Packaging and processing are done in the garage. Each block will produce about 10 pounds of mushrooms.

“It was so easy to do,” Iovino says. “I believe anybody could do it. It seemed like there just wasn’t any way I could mess it up. It’s just bonkers. Pretty quickly it got away from me. The first few experiments were really successful. And soon I’d built all this and was in business.”

Carter doesn’t quite see it that way.

“It’s not as easy as Joe says,” he explains. “It’s not rocket science, to be sure, but he’s got a gift, like all successful farmers. I’ve been to enough farms – over 4000 across North America – to realize you don’t choose farming, it chooses you. You’re called to it. It just took Joe awhile to find his true path.”

Tampa Bay shoppers can find Cactus Hat mushrooms online and all over town, from local favorites like St. Pete’s Brick Street Farms and Tampa’s Meacham Urban Farms to the menus of better restaurants everywhere. There’s also a Cactus Hat Coffee, a luscious full-bodied roast that adds lion’s mane for a research-supported memory and brain function boost.

But about that kinda weird farm name? What on earth is a cactus hat?

Iovino lives in a part of Tampa Bay called Lutz. Years ago, cacti suddenly and randomly started popping up everywhere, as if somebody was sowing them on purpose.

“We kind of think that’s what happened, actually,” Iovino says. “They’re everywhere. And they grow with a flat cap that looks like a hat. So the folks around here started calling ourselves cactus hats. I liked it. It stuck. And it definitely makes you remember the name.”

It’s not mentioned in the show, but Carter has one more reveal about this episode. It’s rare for WTFCF to get a chance to film here at home – it’s even rarer when Carter gets to feature someone from his real-life world.

Before TV came calling, Carter spent years as a syndicated columnist with The Chicago Tribune. “It was the kind of job that gave you a lot of spare time,” he says. And with that time, the producer got involved with youth soccer, eventually coaching his son and dozens of others – including Iovino – for 11 years in New Tampa.

“It turned into a true extended family,” Carter says. “So many of the guys, and a few girls, have done really well for themselves. But Joe’s truly unique and always has been. I knew he’d be somebody special. I couldn’t have been prouder than to be able to tell his story on our show.”

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