Blog

So, turns out one of the challenges of starting this business and trying to keep up the website, on top of keeping up with school, sports and housework (e.g. “life”), is finding time to do all of it! It’s been a month since I wrote even a quick paragraph to the blog. So, a quick update on the farm activities: First, Richard and the boys have been working in the log yard making sure the logs are stacked and spaced, ready to go for production. Richard also put together a very nice, mobile fruiting rack for placing the logs on after soaking. Fortunately we were able to make this from materials we already had in the barn, including some 16-foot lengths of steel pipe from the old dairy operation, and some scraps of pressure-treated wood. We have continued to find lots of ‘volunteer’ shiitakes on the log stacks, so we know conditions are good for growing. Our first set of intentionally soaked logs went into the tank this week, and are now on the rack. It’s a short run, really just a chance to work out any kinks as well as get some sample together for our restaurant buyers. Starting next week, we plan to go into full production. Fingers crossed!!

As we transition into Spring, we are seeing the usual crazy mix of cool, warm, wet, sunny, and sometimes (like yesterday) outright hot! We aren’t anticipating full production of our shiitakes until perhaps June, but we certainly are seeing a few early ones popping out. They mostly are showing a cracked pattern on the surface, which turns out to be something called ‘flower donko’ and usually happen under cool, windy conditions – definitely a good descriptor for our weather so far! These are often prized by chefs as a top-grade mushroom, but we aren’t waiting around to evaluate – the first few went to this morning’s breakfast omelets. As we move into planned production, we’ll be using fruiting blankets to keep the humidity a little higher on the developing mushrooms, so are likely to see less of the cracking pattern. We are so looking forward to trying out some of the delicious-sounding recipes, whether traditional Asian cuisine or other exciting dishes.

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!