Oyster Mushrooms

Fifth grade planted oyster mushrooms 5 weeks ago.  They did great for their first 3 weeks, but when they began to poke out of their mushroom bags, they did not fare well.  There just wasn't enough moisture in the classroom for them and too many books to be spraying extra water around.  

I took them home for the break and have been spraying them 3 to 5 times a day.  You can see below how well they have done.  These are daily shots of the same bunch.

 Dec. 21

 Dec. 22

 Dec. 23

 Dec. 24


Dec. 25

 Dec. 26

 This is the bunch with the largest mushrooms.

And this is the largest bunch.

A Day With Third Grade

Each week when third grade arrives at the farm, they break into four groups.  Each group performs a task.  

This week everyone helped to bring the leftover hay bales down to the farm from the Holiday Fair archery area.  The hay bales will be used for seating during the high school bonfire.

Once the hay bales were stacked, Earth group harvested lettuce and shiitake mushrooms

It was an unusually big harvest so the bucket ended up full to overflowing.

Fire group painted sealer on some of the siding for the new shed. 

Air group cleaned out the compost buckets and moved horse manure to the compost pile. When they were done with all that, they weeded the asparagus bed.

Water group worked on building chicken tractors.  

 These chicken tractors will be a house on top and a run on the bottom so that our girls can earn their keep by eating bugs and weed seeds in the beds and fertilizing the beds with their manure.  The tractors fit exactly over 1/3 of a bed and can be moved as often as necessary.  Once the girls have gone over a section of bed, we will make sure that crops are planted on a schedule that allows at least 120 days between harvest and the bed's last exposure to chicken fertilizer.  Thank you to Kristen McGee who came up with the blueprint for our chicken tractors, purchased materials, had the wood cut to the appropriate lengths and angles and is providing some of the tools we are working with.  As a thank you we are building two tractors, one to keep at the farm and one for Kristen to take home. 

Earth group also worked on digging out the fire pit for the high school bonfire once they were done harvesting.

Michael takes a break and lets Parker do all the work.

Carrots

 Parsnips

Many thanks to Barbara Holloway who took these amazing photos.

Mushroom workshop

If the earlier posts on 5th grade's adventure with Shiitake planting piqued your interest, you might check out one of the shiitake workshops at Pickards Mountain Eco-Institute in Chapel Hill, NC.  You have your choice of several possible times on March 26 and April 2 and you even get to bring home your own inoculated log.

Shiitake Mushrooms

Fifth grade came out to the garden and planted mushrooms on Valentine's day.  Chris Richmond, our mushroom mentor brought all of the equipment we needed and told us a little bit about mushrooms and how to plant them before we got started.

Ian, our handy-dandy maintenance dude drilled holes in logs.  For this batch of shiitake we used sweetgum logs.

Next we loaded up our inoculators by tapping them in a can of spore mixed with sawdust:

We put the inoculators over the drilled holes and pushed the spore mix into the holes:

The log was then moved down the table for sealing.  The children took swabs of hot, food grade paraffin and sealed the spore holes and any other open spots on the logs in order to keep moisture out and prevent other fungus spores from getting in.

The finished logs were then carried over to the log pile where they will wait until this time next year to bloom.  If we are lucky, we'll get a few mushrooms as early as this fall.  

Note that there are two children carrying what looks like fairly small logs.  These are fresh cut logs with most of the sap still in so they are very heavy!  Below is the start of one of our log piles:

Once all of the logs were finished and piled, Ian and Chris (our mushroom planting instructor) painted the ends with more wax.  Below is a picture of the finished piles.

If you are interested in learning more about planting shiitake or other mushrooms or ordering supplies for planting, check out Field and Forest.  If you would like to know more about mushrooms in general, Mycelium Running is an excellent book to have a look at.  If you live in the Chapel Hill, NC area you could also contact our mushroom guide, Chris Richmond at 919-932-1335 or via email at daganawiga@gmail.com.