Saturday, May 2, 2015

Shiitake log inoculation

Because we're never planning to be a big farm, we're hoping to be able to diversify in ways that other farms can't.  We figure, we don't have to have SUPER efficient methods for harvesting massive amounts of any one thing. We can use more/different methods that work better on a small scale. 

One thing we hope to provide to our CSA members (which has doubled since last year!) is farm grown mushrooms (and wild harvested - I can't believe I never blogged about our bounty! This year).

We've decided to start with shiitake mushrooms since they're pretty easy to grow, and lots of people like them. Shiitakes grow well in Red Oak, and we have a lot of that on our property. We ordered some mushroom spawn and some inoculation tools from Field and Forest.

Here's how you inoculate a log with shiitake spawn in our usual photo montage fashion. :)


One of the tools we ordered, and it is AMAZING! It's a modified electric grinder. Instead of the grinding wheel (which we could still attach and use if we wanted), there's a modified drill bit with a stopper. So, you basically touch this thing to the log where you want the hole, and it drills the perfect size/depth every time. Amazing.

Here's Anna in action. You can see several holes she's already drilled. The wood chips did go flying a bit, but we noticed they mostly flew sideways and not up. So, for safety reasons...
Always wear eye protection when your face is at log level. You'll notice the farm manager supervising his apprentice from a safe distance in the background.
This is what the spawn looks like. It's actually spawn in sawdust, so it mostly looks like funky sawdust....but it smells like mushroomy goodness! It's white on the outside because that's the mycelium, and it's about to fruit -- it's only good for up to 6 months in the fridge after you get it.

After holes are drilled, you use another super tool to stuff each hole with spawn. This tool is perfectly sized to push a plug of spawn into the predrilled holes. They seriously have this down to a science.
It's best to work on some overhead presses while moving newly inoculated logs to the next station...

They were unimpressed with our antics...
Next, you seal each hole and the ends of the log with cheese wax. This seals the moisture in the logs so they won't dry out, and  the mushrooms can feed off the log for years to come. The nice thing about this step is that the wax needs to be warm to be liquid (duh!). So, pick a cold, windy, rainy early spring day, light the wood stove in the basement, pump up the jams, and inoculate some logs -- sounds pretty perfect to me!

One year later...  We did two logs at a workshop last year, and it takes a year for each log to start fruiting. Once they start, however, they'll fruit for up to 6 years!  This year was our big mushroom log push, but hopefully if we do a few each year, we'll always have a rotating stock.