So much has happened since last post.  Our Pink, Golden and PoHu Oyster mushrooms flushed and I sold all of them to local chefs.  We are running out of space to grow mushrooms and hope to raise money to buy a green house.  There is a hungry market here in McDonough and hopefully we can meet the needs of this small community.

We went to Ashville NC to learn more about the mushroom business and had a very productive time.

Today I'm listening to the spitting of my pressure cooker sterilizing more substrate to inoculate with a new strain for us - Shiitake 75. Here are some pics of the mushrooms we sold.

Allow me to be totally un-PC when I say that we had a joyous day Sunday celebrating the resurrection of our Lord Jesus.  The absolutely gorgeous weather didn't hurt either.

This great spring weather is an added bonus, giving us the opportunity to try another experiment with golden oyster mushrooms, pink and pohu oysters.  This time we are pasteurizing wheat straw then layering straw and mushroom spawn in laundry baskets.  Pasteurizing takes up a lot of time due to the small scale equipment so only a small amount of straw is pasteurized at a time.  However, today we should be ready to inoculate 1 basket.  Then two to go.

Our King oyster mushrooms are fruiting.   Can't wait to harvest.  We also had some Wine Cap mushrooms show up in our yard.  We had planted them last fall.  Our first customer came yesterday to see our operation.  She really wanted Reishi mushrooms but I haven't ordered the spawn yet.  Reishi is purely medicinal especially for cancer, helping the immune system, and for problems with the liver.  I gave her our Wine Caps because she drove 50 miles to get here.    She seemed very happy with the Wine Caps.

We have lift off.

Wow, we have mushrooms.  Gray Dove oysters to be exact.  These are the first to fruit and we are delighted.  This was an experimental exercise in different substrate taken from books and off the internet.  Our supplier, Field and Forest from Wisconsin also sends directions and are available on line for the occasional panicked question.  So here are the fruits of our labors.  Aren't they adorable?

If anyone views this who has any suggestions on growing oysters after viewing the pictures, please feel free.  We need all the help we can get. Thanks.

April 6, 2014

Well we have a new member to our family.  We weren't anticipating this new addition, but couldn't turn away from the cutest puppy ever, with the exception of Phoebe of course.  We were under the impression that she was probably around 8 weeks old but found out at the vet that she was more like 6 weeks old.  She was dumped at the trucking school where my husband teaches and came to live with us that day.  Who could turn down a face like this.

Now she is 13 weeks old.

We've been told she may be an English Mastiff. Really?

One of the largest breeds on the planet? Well we love her anyway and are preparing for what life will 

be like with a big, huge, gigantic dog.  Fencing in the property is top priority.  She's a sweetie.

Mushroom News

On the Shiitake front we began inoculating substrate consisting of sawdust, wood chips, rice bran and  calcium carbonate.  They are incubating in the grow room and almost ready for fruiting.

We mix the ingredients in bags then sterilize in the pressure cooker.  After that we place the bags and spawn in the inoculation lab box to keep from exposing the substrate and spawn to contaminates.  About 2/3 cup of spawn is used per bag. The bags are sealed then placed

in the environmentally manipulated pods until ready for fruiting.

We're also growing oyster mushrooms on straw substrate inside bags.  We have to chop the wheat straw into small pieces - we used a garbage can and weed eater.  Then we soak the straw and for added measure we pasteurized the straw in a large pot, we used our pressure cooker pot for that. We placed the straw in bags and inoculated with grain spawn.  That's me in the background soaking the straw in hot water and dish liquid.

To have a little fun, I ordered a Lions Mane mushroom block that was ready to fruit.  We put it in with the other bags and watched it grow.

When it was big enough we cut it and ate it.  Most mushrooms do well sauteed with olive oil and garlic.

It was delicious.  

Until next time, Mary and Bob, bon appetit. 

Shiitake Village Taking Shape

Well already January 10. Where does the time go? Hope everyone is having a happy new year so far despite the weather. I can't believe we have the coldest winter ever in Georgia the year we decide to make our home into a farm. So let's hope we will see those pretty brown Shiitake late spring this year. Thankfully, our pipes did not burst. We know a lot of people who are dealing with that mess right now. We are slowly receiving all the equipment we ordered for our grow room. Vic has really put a lot of work into designing the environment. He constructed a glove box in order to inoculate the sterilized substrate blocks with shiitake spawn. We are waiting for the weather to warm up before our friends at Field and Forest in Wisconsin can send us the spawn safely. Meanwhile we have readied the special burner and pressure cooker to use for the sterilization of sawdust and wood chips to blend with rice bran and calcium carbonate to create the enriched growing blocks for the shiitake. Vic has built shelves and enclosed them in plastic sheeting. Each unit will have a fan, filter, misting system and drain. We haven't seen anyone create a sterile environment quite like this and hope that this will be sufficient to grow our shiitake. We had to use the back bedroom as a growing room but because the shiitake require 100% humidity at a certain stage for fruiting, we wanted to save the bedroom walls from the moisture, thus the enclosed shelf units. We are ready to start once we receive our shipment. If you do a search on the internet you will find People all over the world using whatever methods work best for them to grow their mushrooms. Here are a few pics of our endeavor.

Another new gateway.

I know that a lot of people know about all this organic business and small farming etc. but after trying it in my twenties then fleeing to the city and turning my back on Mother Earth News, I have rediscovered how much fun this all is. We are now planning on growing mushrooms indoors which is a little more complicated than inoculating logs. We are having so much fun learning and experimenting. I am totally looking forward to our trip in February to Jekyl Island for the Georgia Organics Conference. We are also looking at a few other things to do in our small forest farm. Now is a great time to plan and research since the weather is cold and rainy - cold for Georgia anyway. I still miss the road, and find myself day dreaming about Florida, or Arizona, or Nevada, or Texas.... But having Christmas here at the house this year was terrific. And making our house a home again feels right. Stay tuned for more on mushrooms.

Maitake

Today we placed Maitake spawn in logs using the wedge method. This mushroom is also known as "hen of the woods". It is considered a medicinal mushroom used in treatment of cancer, the immune system, diabetes and heart disease. They are also very delicious to eat. There is tons of information on the web about all these mushrooms and that is where we get our info as well as from other growers and from books by Paul Stamets. Even though we did our research, this was our first time so, again, as with the shiitake, we followed what we learned and seeded our land with maitake spawn and hope for the best. Here are a few pictures.