Experiments with land and growing things can take time. Our shiitake mushroom experiment started over a year ago. In November 2019, part of a White Oak blew down during a storm and into our hayfield. While clearing the brush, I set aside a half-dozen logs with the thought of growing mushrooms. We left the logs in the woods over the winter.
In April 2020, we inoculated the logs with shiitake mushroom spawn we purchased from Field & Forest at the Madison Garden Expo, one of the last public events held before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the country. The logs rested in the woods throughout 2020 and the winter and spring of 2021, while the rest of us learned to work from home with new terms like social distancing.
In March and April, I visited the logs and saw some signs of growth. We harvested a handful of mushrooms, but the logs seemed to struggle through our dry spring. Statewide, we are still about 5 inches below average for precipitation. The mushrooms went into our dehydrator for future use.
We received nearly an inch of rain this week, which certainly boosted growth in our hayfield. The grass is nearly as tall as our dog. This weekend, I trudged across the field to the woods with Maxie, and was rewarded with some great-looking shiitake mushrooms.
I was able to harvest about 2 pounds of mushrooms, while leaving some smaller ones to grow. Maggie sliced them up and ran them through the dehydrator, drying the stems separately for soups and stocks. Today at the grocery store, I noticed that a 3.5 ounce package of non-dehydrated shiitake mushrooms was $4.99. That puts the retail value of our first harvest at about $45. We have not yet broken even on our experiment, but we should continue to get mushrooms for the next 3 years or so. The biggest part of the investment was time, and patience. A lot happened in the past 2 years.
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