Lucas Jackson and Maeve Mangine shifted plans for a farm centered on a
goat dairy after taking a workshop in growing shiitake mushrooms. All
it took was logs from their land, mushroom spawn and their labor.Now
they're selling the spongy, rich mushrooms to several Vermont
restaurants and a food cooperative and through a community-supported
agriculture farm. This season, they expect to produce about 500 pounds
of mushrooms, which retail for as much as $16 a pound.The couple's
Tangled Roots Farm in Shrewsbury is one of about 20 farms chosen in
Vermont and New York as research sites under a $116,000 U.S. Department
of Agriculture grant provided to the University of Vermont Extension's
Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Cornell University Cooperative
Extension in 2010.A UVM-Cornell study conducted over the past three
years under the grant has found that growing mushrooms outdoors can be
profitable to farmers with at least 500 logs, bringing in $11,190 in
gross income at $16 a pound, and that demand is outstripping supply.Next
month, the universities plan to complete a guide for growing shiitake
mushrooms in the Northeast.Used cranesJackson,
27, and Mangine, 28, were among 500 to 600 people who attended a series
of workshops held by the universities to teach Northeast farmers how to
grow shiitakes while using resources from managing or thinning their
land and forests.Like other Northeast farmers, they're limited by the
cold, unlike larger-scale operations in Pennsylvania where mushrooms are
grown indoors on compressed sawdust logs in controlled environments.
But what they do have going for them is little, if any, overhead: the
hardwood logs, a shady spot in the woods, water from a spring up the
hill and a refrigerator to store the freshly harvested shiitakes.
"The
average temperature needs to be above 40-ish, so we're pretty limited
in our outdoor fruiting season in Vermont and that's kind of the nature
of what we're doing," said Mangine, who works as a school administrator.
"But growing them outside like this is really nice because we really
have very few inputs."The Tangled Roots Farm, one of the larger in
Vermont, has grown to 500 logs. Each log produces about half a pound of
mushrooms twice a season.Through the USDA grant, the farm received
shiitake spawn, which is inserted into holes drilled into the roughly
3-foot logs.The holes are sealed with wax and the logs sit for a year in
stacks while the spawn colonizes the wood. A year later, farmers shock
the logs by immersing them in a tub of water, which stimulates them to
grow shiitakes. The logs are then removed from the water and stacked,
and the shitakes grow within a week to 10 days.A fresh shiitake torn off
one of their sugar maple logs is both light and meaty, with a rich
nutty flavor featuring a hint of garlic."They've just got a load of
different flavors for different people," Jackson said.And nutritional
benefits to boot. Mushrooms provide nutrients such as potassium, Vitamin
D, selenium and riboflavin.Demand for mushrooms is inching up, said
Laura Phelps, president of the American Mushroom Institute, a trade
organization representing indoor mushroom growers.Per capita consumption
is about 4 pounds per person per year now in the U.S.,modern lightingAngular contact ball bearings 79C Series from China up
from 3.6 pounds two years ago and 1.9 pounds in 1975, she
said.Shiitakes are just a tiny fraction of the 896 million pounds of
fungi produced in the U.S. from 2012 to 2013. The U.S. crop is mostly
Agaricus mushrooms, such as the common white button mushrooms and brown
mushrooms, including portobello and cremini varieties, which are
commonly grown indoors.The number of commercial shiitake growers who
have at least 200 logs in production or a commercial indoor growing area
has grown from 142 producing 7.7 million pounds from 2003 to 2004 to
179 producing 8.6 million pounds from 2012 to 2013, according to the
USDA National Agriculture Statistics Service.Julie Rockcastle and her
husband, Steve, owners of Green Heron Growers in Sherman, N.Y., served
as advisers to the UVM-Cornell project. They got into shiitake growing
in 2007 at the urging of their son, a Cornell University student who was
friends with the president of the mushroom club there.
"They
showed us an area in our hemlock woods that would be perfect for
shiitake production, and they helped get us started," said Julie
Rockcastle.Like Tangled Roots Farm, which also sells raw goats' milk and
chicken, Green Heron Growers doesn't just focus on mushrooms. It's just
one of their farm ventures, along with organic vegetables, chickens,
eggs and grass-fed beef, but it's one of their most popular."There's
pretty high demand," she said. "We go to the farmers market in Buffalo
and never have enough."The study found anecdotedly that demand for these
forest-grown shiitakes far outstrips supply, said Ben aterman, who
serves as outreach coordinator for the project."We could see eight times
the current production and still maintain ricing at $16 a pound retail.
So there's a lot of room for new growers to get into this," he
said.Encouraged by their success, the Rockcastles enlist volunteers each
spring to prepare the logs in an effort to increase production to meet
demand. Like angled Roots, they're also trying other mushroom varieties,
including lion's mane and maitake.glass refill"It's a wonderful product for a farm that has other things going on," Rockcastle said.contemporary lighting
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