Meet the Market: Spotlight on New FRESHFARM MVT Vendor EightFold Farms
Thursday April 9, 2026
With the FRESHFARM MVT Market main market season kicking off last Saturday, we wanted to take a moment to introduce our readers to a few of the new faces popping up at 5th & I Streets NW on Saturdays from 9am-1pm this season. First up: we’re excited to welcome a brand new mushroom vendor to our market! EightFold Farms is a hyper-local farm network hailing from just across the river at Barry Farm in Southeast DC. Founder Calvin Hines Jr. is a native Washingtonian with over 25 years of experience in the hospitality industry here in the District. After growing frustrated with the lack of convenient grocery stores near his home in Southeast DC, he enrolled in UDC’s College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences Urban Agriculture Technician training program and began exploring sustainable solutions to rectify the food apartheid affecting neighborhoods in DC Wards 7 and 8. He quickly determined that traditional grocery stores alone wouldn’t solve the systemic issues and set out to focus on solutions that could “enhance food accessibility, bolster the economy, and ensure profitability.”
Today, EightFold Farms is a network of small commercial urban farms located throughout Wards 7 and 8. The team redesigns lawns, rooftops, and underutilized spaces into urban commercial farms that are planted and rotated with different quick growing, high value crops or house climate controlled solar-powered mobile farms. Part of this fleet is a 170-square foot mobile mushroom farm capable of producing up to 400 pounds of gourmet mushroom varieties like lion’s mane, blue oyster, black pearl, and shiitake a week. These mushrooms are sold directly to local DC restaurant partners, distributed through a CSA program, and are now available for sale at FRESHFARM MVT Market every Saturday from 9am-1pm! Be sure to stop by and check out the selection next time you’re walking through — we a”shroom” you’ll find something you like!
Read More:
“New wave mobile mushroom farming comes to Southeast D.C.,” Axios DC, May 5, 2024



