Mushroom Mania

One of the great things about working at Harvest Hill is that every so often we get to go on field trips to other farms. Bill knows a lot of other farmers in the area and is committed to taking us on outings to learn about types of farming that he doesn’t do, such as mushrooms, herbs, and orchards. He wants this internship to be an educational experience as well as a taste of what running a functional farm entails.

On May 26^th, we went to Wild Branch Farm to learn about mushroom and mycelium cultivation. It was awesome. What some people may not know is that mushrooms are only a small portion of the organism known as mycelium. Mycelium is the main part of the organism and mushrooms are just the fruit of the mycelium. Glenn and his wife Cathy have a diverse farm involving vegetables, cows, goats and mushrooms. You can check out their website at www.wildbranchmushrooms.com The mushrooms they grow for market are oyster mushrooms, but Glenn is also interested in cultivating mycelium that will aid in environmental clean-up. As both primary and secondary decomposer, mycelium is effective in removing harmful elements from the surrounding area and consolidating the toxic elements it removes.

Glenn cultivates his mushrooms from wild mushrooms that he collects. Once he finds a mushroom he likes, he brings it into his lab and shakes it in front of this fan system while holding a Petri dish underneath to catch the spores. The Petri dishes are then left to grow more spores.
Once he has grown a strong enough culture, he then uses the spores he has grown to inoculate more Petri dishes and continues this cycle.
If the spawn is fully grown, but not immediately needed, it can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a year. Once he is ready to grow mushrooms from the cultures, he soaks barley or oats in hot water. Once the grain has cooled, he packs it into a vacuum seal-able bag and adds mushroom spawn. He then seals the bags and lets the spawn feed on the grain for approximately a month. Below are three pictures of these grain/spore mixtures in various stages of growth.

Once the spawn has fed on the barley for long enough, it’s time to add this mixture to straw. The first step in this process is to steam straw in a wood-oven fired steamer.

The straw is steamed for 4 hours and then left to cool for about 30 minutes. Once the straw is cool enough to handle, it is pitchforked onto a stainless steel table and mixed around to get all the hot pockets of leftover steam out. Next, the bag of spores and grain is opened and mixed into the straw. The grain has a very earthy, fungal smell, somewhat of a cross between tempeh, mushrooms and good soil. You can see Brandon partaking of the smell in the second photo down.

After the straw has been thoroughly inoculated with the spores, it is stuffed into giant bags made out of thick, greenhouse plastic. The straw is thoroughly compacted as too much air will cause the straw to grow bacteria and spoil the mushrooms. Next, the tops are tied off and small holes are cut in the bags to allow the mushrooms to emerge. It takes about two weeks for the mushrooms to poke through the bags and then another 5-10 days to become fully grown. Oyster mushrooms grow best at around 60-70 degrees with 90% humidity. Though many mushrooms can grow in the dark, oyster mushrooms need light to grow.

Glenn built a special room connected to his greenhouse for the mushroom bags to be hung. In the winter the room is heated by a wood stove, as is his greenhouse. He also set up a special drip line that drips water onto the walls, which helps control the humidity level in the room. The bags are hung on stands made out of rebar and left until the mushrooms mature.

Our afternoon at Wild Branch was great. Aside from learning about mushroom cultivation, we also got to see baby sheep and goats and Mark and I bought some of the best ground beef either of us have ever tasted. Glenn and his family have 200 acres and only 9 cows, so the free range cows have all the grass they could possibly want. There also seems to be something about meeting the farmer and seeing where the animal or plant lived out its days to make the food taste that much better. As an added bonus, Glen gave us a mushroom bag that had already fruited twice to bring back to the farm with us. As I write this, the bag has just started producing mushrooms again. Soon enough, we will be eating some very local oyster mushrooms!