My Saturday morning commute is always peaceful.
I love being at this old Warehouse by myself in the morning.
Yesterday we sorted and packed 600 pounds of mushrooms for today's markets, we hope to see you there!
Oyster mushrooms on sale!
Fulton Street Market
Grand Haven Farmers Market
Holland Farmers Market
Kalamazoo Farmers Market
Meridian Township Farmers' Market
Muskegon Farmers Market
Rockford MI Farmers Market
St Joseph Farmers market
What a week!
Things are coming along splendidly at the new farm.
Mushrooms just started growing there about a week ago and by tonight I will have harvested a couple hundred pounds. I picked about 80 "after work" last night.
We're still transitioning out of our old greenhouse, and while I will miss it so, the new space is producing beautiful mushrooms with a much greater yield, greater consistency, cleaner, and with a better texture and shelf life. The increased profitability will really help us because as many mushrooms as we sell sometimes it's still a struggle to fund everything.
Over the next few weeks we'll move about 800 shiitake bags/blocks out of our warehouse in Grand Rapids and disassemble the shelving and take it all home to the new farm. Where we're already storing about 800 blocks of other mushrooms in our home laboratory.
I got the day off from market today because I will be teaching a mushroom cultivation class at Blandford Nature Center starting at 1:00. And I've used my morning to start rearranging our warehouse space in anticipation of building a small commercial kitchen here for production of our mushroom jerky, tinctures, and other processed products. Hopefully we will start construction on that by the end of summer.
There's so much more but I won't bore you with the details. I hope you all enjoy this beautiful weekend and thank you for your support.
On days like this I'm thankful to have a walk-in cooler at home to stand after I'm done harvesting in our 90% humidity grow room.
Also thankful for it on days when I need to chill a watermelon, there's too many groceries to put in the fridge, I'm pickling 50 lb of cucumbers, and everyday when it saves me a drive to Grand Rapids to put away the day's harvest.
Stay cool!
Well it's taken far longer than I anticipated but I'm putting the finishing touches on one of our fruiting rooms at the new location this evening.
Humidity system is up and running, patching up the last few waterproofing aspects and I just need to install lighting and a couple of CO2 and timer controlled exhaust fans. Next week we'll install a 48,000 BTU dual zone mini split heating and cooling system. Requiring up to 10 fresh air exchanges per hour, mushrooms demand a lot of environmental modification to maintain their preferred fruiting environments; while still being far less environmentally impactful than traditionally grown crops and especially other protein sources.
In a few weeks this space will be producing producing 600 lb of mushrooms a week. I introduced our first mushroom bags this evening.
I always think that because I'm self-employed I have all the time in the world to work on "extra" projects, but the reality is our day-to-day tasks take up 60 hours of my week. 60 relatively relaxed and generally awesome hours, I might add.
And yet, somehow my favorite part of my job is working alone at night on those things that will move us forward.
The freedom from mundanity provided by being self employed in a unique field that provides continued opportunities for growth is better than any job I could have ever hoped for.
#mushroomfarming#fungusfarm#fungifarm#michigangrown#michiganfarmer
I will be teaching a mushroom cultivation class at blandford nature center on Saturday June 15th.
This class is being offered at a discounted rate compared to the ones we offer at our own facility in the fall and winter.
There will be mushroom growing kits available for purchase as well as fresh mushrooms and some other products.
More info is available on the blandford nature center website events page where you can register for the class.
I hope to see you there!
🍄 Starting Farmers Market season with a sale on our favorite and most popular mushroom, shiitake! 🍄
$6/ half pound $12/pound
We're growing more than ever before! And thankful for the opportunity provide so many of these fresh beautiful mushrooms today at the following farmers markets:
Fulton Street Farmers Market
Grand Haven Farmers Market
Kalamazoo Farmers Market
Meridian Township Farmers' Market
Muskegon Farmers Market
Rockford MI Farmers Market
We've got some internationally imported morels from the foothills of the Himalayan mountains.
Order them on farmlink, or message us here, or email to info@mycophile.org to reserve some up pickup at our warehouse next week.
$60/lb or 3 lb for $175.
We can't bring them to most farmers markets as they only allow Michigan produce.
Morels are becoming more scarce by the year as we continue to lose our elm and Ash trees. But these imported ones seem firm, clean, and I can't wait to try some this evening!
#morels#morelmushrooms#mushrooms#ediblemushrooms#edible#michiganmushrooms#grandrapidsmi
