TUPPER LAKE – It wasn’t until Garrett Kopp found a strange-looking fungus in the woods that he really began to see the forest for the trees … and dollar signs.

The young entrepreneur and avid outdoorsman from Tupper Lake has found several ways to monetize the wilderness. His current venture is Birch Boys, a growing herbal supplement business he founded at age 14 to sell a tree-borne fungus called chaga.

Now 18, Kopp is preparing to increase the business’ capacity to harvest, process and market the fungus. He’s invested in new machinery, found a large production space, networked at food festivals and is preparing for a tour around the state to expand his list of retail partners.

Chaga is an age-old folk medicine with a range of supposed health benefits that include high antioxidants, positive links to immune health and liver health, and cancer-fighting properties. Kopp came across the fungus during his earlier ventures, which include trapping and producing an online video series on wilderness survival.

“I saw this big, charcoal-looking lump growing out of a birch tree and thought it was really cool looking,” Kopp said. “I picked it off, and it was bright orange on the inside. I Googled it and found out it was the stuff my grandma was telling me everybody was drinking at the Adult Center.”

He began selling the chaga to visitors of the Adirondack Adult Center and moved to trapping conventions and farmers markets for bigger payoffs. In 2015 Kopp began selling the chaga packaged in jars under the state Department of Agriculture and Markets qualifications, which he said were “in this interesting gray area loophole with very few legal restrictions.” You’ll find his product for sale in Well Dressed Foods and Health Hub in Tupper Lake and the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake.

According to Kopp, the only restrictions for chaga sales are that the fungus is ground in food-grade steel, the seller registers their business, and the product is tested for nutrition facts. At 15 years old, he took these steps and began developing packaging, label design and research references to back up the supplements’ touted health benefits.

Kopp says the most effective and common way to consume chaga is to steep it in hot water like tea. Some people mix it with tea, honey, maple syrup and coffee for taste. He has streamlined the production of the product with the help of friends and family.

First, Kopp finds the fungus growing as a black, lumpy mass from birch trees. He harvests about half of it on his family’s hunting property and relies on his uncle to provide the rest. According to state regulations, he must do this on his own land or private land with permission. He said it’s usually not a tough sell for landowners due to the fungus’ harmful effects on trees.

“This shouldn’t freak people out, but chaga is basically a parasite,” Kopp explained. “It forms in the heart of the tree and very slowly sucks all the nutrients out of it. Eventually it comes out in this black lump on the outside, and at that point it’s really starting to hurt the tree.”

By removing the exterior part of the fungus with a saw, Kopp is able to prolong the tree’s life and harvest a nutrient-dense chunk for production. He said the chaga will grow back in a few years, however, and an infected tree is “basically sentenced to death.”

The chaga is given time to dry out after harvest. From there, Kopp and friends chop it into smaller chunks with a hatchet, feed those chunks through an ice-shredding machine and refine the product further with a meat grinder.

Kopp finished his senior year of high school and freshman year of college simultaneously at Clarkson University. He came in second place for the freshman business scholarship program and befriended the winner, Josh Parker of Canton, who runs a maple syrup business.

The duo attended Expo East in Baltimore, Maryland, where Kopp secured a few wholesalers of his product as they mingled among more than 24,000 natural food professionals.

During their freshman year, Kopp and Parker paired ideas and devised a business plan in a college course for a bottled, maple-infused chaga tea. They pitched the idea to a panel of actual investors at the end of the class and were awarded $7,000 in funding, but had to dissolve their venture after Parker’s syrup business began to bloom.

Kopp’s future goals are to graduate college and become an entrepreneur, hopefully with an expanded chaga business. He’s developed a marketing plan with a focus on market research and informational displays to increase the credibility of the product’s health appeals.