Investment in Mushroom Futures is Paying Off

Last fall and winter we purchased some mushroom dowel spawn from Fungi Perfecti and inoculated some sweetgum logs. Sweetgum trees are the first hardwood species to colonize abandoned fields or nowadays, abandoned building lots. They are plentiful, considered to be weed trees, not useful for firewood because the grain is very twisted making the logs hard to split. They also happen to be very appetizing to fungi, especially shitake (Lentinula edodes) and lions mane (Hericium erinaceus) mushroom fungi.
About a week ago we got about 2 " of rain, the first rain in a month. It was perfectly timed for mushroom stimulation along with cooler fall temperatures.
It took about 10 days for the mushrooms to appear. It was tremendously exciting to go out to the stack of logs and see those beautiful things sprouting out. Some of them were huge compared to any other shitakes i've seen. We harvested 1.5 pounds of shitakes and just 2 lions manes.
This was the first time we had eaten lions manes. What a treat that was. We sauteed them in butter with some garlic. They had the texture and flavor of lobster. Deeelllissshhhusss!
Here's a tip about shitakes we learned from Paul Stamets. Placing them in the sun, gill sides up for about 6 hours will greatly increase their vitamin D content making them even more nutritious.
Invest in mushrooms- safer than banks.

Trashed on the road

I've been out west for 8 days. In the beginning i tried to keep up with my project documenting my trash, recycling and reuse project. As time went on I found that doing so was detracting from my ability to have a relaxing vacation so i relaxed my vigilance to some extent. However i did have some insights along the way. The first one is that other cities are way ahead of Atlanta on the path towards sustainability. Both the airports in Denver and Seattle have recycling containers readily accessibly throughout them. Wake up Hartsfield! The second is that it takes a lot of planning and discipline to eat healthy food and to tread softly on the planet while on the road. It has been suggested that we need to be more responsible about taking frivolous or unnecessary trips on airplanes anyway. I don't feel that was the case on this trip because i traveled to a workshop to learn about growing mushrooms. Once I put what i learned into practice i will more that offset the carbon expended on the trip by growing and using mushrooms and by teaching others how to do so as well.
More about that in future posts.