My first blog post is going to be short. We are reaching the culmination of a full year of planning and waiting for our first season of shiitake mushroom production, and things are BUSY! Even though we haven’t yet seen our first production, we are already hard at work on the 2018 crop. In the last two weeks we’ve brought in around 3/4 of the new logs needed for this year’s inoculation. The amount of rain we are getting the last couple of days is insane, and we can’t really go after those last few logs as the ground is just too soft. We really need one more good trip to the woods, and we should be all set on new bolts. In the meantime, we have a refrigerator full of shiitake spawn awaiting inoculation, and a relatively dry barn to work in. It will be a long and tedious few weeks of drilling and plugging, but with good music and refreshments, we’ll get it done. And, between log harvesting and inoculation sessions, I am spending at least a few hours a day on paperwork, learning how to build our website, doing market research, and calling restaurants – my least favorite job – I am not a polished salesperson by any stretch and I am mostly terrified when someone actually picks up the phone! Adventures in cold-calling? That can probably be a blog post all on its own some day. Anyway, with the rain pounding outside, this website is almost ready to go live, and so . . . here we go!
Our Mission
Wintonbury Farm is a small, family-owned operation dedicated to producing high quality, naturally-grown forest shiitake mushrooms for health-conscious consumers and high-end restaurants through direct restaurant sales, local food markets, and farmer’s markets in northern New York State. Our mission is to cultivate a high-demand product that is regionally recognized for superior quality and reliable supply while sharing our passion for local food, organic principles, and sustainable farm and forest management practices.
Wintonbury Farm LLC 