dawn of spawn

I ventured beyond Lot 9 one day and noticed that there's a boggy area on the northeast side of a hill.  City employees trimmed fire-damaged trees in December, leaving behind perfectly stacked logs.  What a perfect situation for growing mushrooms! Mushrooms tend to like moist, shady areas and can be easily propagated by inserting wooden plugs (one-inch, round wood pieces) that have been inoculated (imbued with) mushroom spawn.  I ordered two packets of oyster mushroom plugs (100 plugs each packet) from Fungi Perfecti and spent a day with Janet and Rae drilling holes, whacking plugs, and wax-coating the holes. 

We were well-prepared, save a rubber mallet that would have been useful for fitting plugs into holes and brush that would have been good for spreading wax.  We took logs to hit the plugs in.  I felt like a neanderthal.  Hadn't even hit the Stone Age.  Pfft.  After that, we dabbed camping stove-melted wax onto the plugs to seal the mushroom spawn and keep out other fungi or bacteria from interfering.  Rae came up with the idea to fray twig ends so that they were small fibres and brush-like.  We filled stacked the eight logs of each variety of mushroom -- blue oyster and pearl oyster, so now we only have to wait.

This was one of my favorite farming days.  I got to hang out with friends, share a delicious meal, and be outside.  Let there be more of those days.