***I know it’s got big The Last of Us Energy but get over it!!!***

Last summer, Matt discovered a new passion: foraging for mushrooms!!! It kind of happened by accident. Some combination of his curious nature and our lands’ ability to push out a multitude of fungi all June and July and August eventually led him down the road of researching all he could about mushrooms.

He started off with the basics: which of these mushrooms will kill us? I was particularly interested in this first lesson.

Once he figured that out, he turned his attention to determining the best place to hunt for a particular mushroom on our property, proper foraging practices to ensure the mushrooms return year after year, and of course, researching which ones will fuck us up make a delicious stir-fry.

He identified chanterelles, oyster mushrooms and a bunch of others I’m honestly forgetting the names of. He learned what to look for where poisonous look-alikes are concerned, and maybe most importantly, discovered a new passion. Or, at least, a new very big interest.

Over the past six months or so, the interest in mushrooms has sprouted beyond foraging into the realms of home-growing and mushroom farming. He learned of a method of mushroom farming that just involves inserting spores into recently cut logs and keeping them moist. That’s on our 2023 summer list of things to do.

For now, he wanted to experiment with an easy-for-beginners no-fail mushroom kit. Basically, it’s a package of substrate (AKA stuff mushrooms will eat) combined with spores (AKA the stuff that becomes mushrooms), and all you do is spritz it every day for like a week and BOOM! You’ve got enough mushrooms for a couple of meals and a week’s worth of entertainment. And also content for your blog and social channels.

While we’re both excited to dig into the more complex methods of mushroom farming, this little exercise was a lot of fun and produced some delicious mushrooms that we used to make a delicioussss Chicken Marsala :)

Thanks for stopping by the blog today, and happy shrooming!

XOXO

Beau & Matt & Fox & Barley & Rye

A Beginner Mushroom Growing Kit We Love!!!