Mushrooms, anyone?

I had a good post waiting to be written last Saturday, but I was dead tired from carrying trees logs. Then, early Sunday morning I got sick, and wasn't sure if I'd live to see another day (I'm known to exaggerate just a little). Now that I've recuperated, here's the post.

Last Friday night, I went up to a meeting of our county's sustainable farmers (there are three of us- we met at Josh's house:) to discuss seeds. It was a great meeting and produced a lot of good ideas, which may or may not mean that I grow a lot of cucumbers and turkeys.

On Saturday, Josh came down to our farm and we spent the day inoculating mushroom logs. Josh had gone to a mushroom workshop at ASAN back in November, and we had all decided to try growing some. We cut 120 logs, and Josh inoculated 21 logs for us, in return for the rest of the logs. In nine months we should start getting beautiful Shitaake mushrooms.

First, we cut white oak or red oak trees into 30" logs, between 3" and 8" in diameter. Then we drilled holes 6" apart in rows 3" around the logs.

Next, we filled the holes with mushroom spawn, which looks gross but smells pretty good.

Finally, the ends of the log and each spawn-filled hole was covered with cheesewax, along with any imperfections. The result is a mushroom log, which will fruit 2 or 3 times a year for about 3 years. I plan to have mushrooms for sale ;).

~Sherlock