Even though we're supposed to get up to 15 inches of snow in the next couple days, I know spring is coming. It's just around the corner - I can feel it!
In preparation for inoculations, starting soon, we're framing in a little room in the high tunnel. This is where we do inoculations every year:
Just a little corner in the southwest corner of the high tunnel. We have an inoculation table, our handy Pegasus tool, a big air compressor, and all the other tools we need. At least, that's what's in this corner when we are inoculating. Over the last couple years we realized the Pegasus does better in a warmer environment. This has meant the use of a variety of heaters, but that's not very efficient in our giant high tunnel space. So we're going to frame in a rough little room so we can make it a bit warmer and hopefully get the Pegasus to work much better.
It's a start!
Last time I reported a record load of 270 logs. We beat that last week with a load of 318! We are very, very close to having all the logs we need for inoculations!
We'll probably be out in the woods for an additional week after that gathering more logs - but these ones specifically for building some frames for our naturally fruiting logs. More to come on that project - once all this snow melts and it warms up a bit more!
Last summer we had a group of kids from a local school in Amery come visit the farm. They came prepared with all sorts of questions and were pretty excited to get to pick some mushrooms and learn about what we do here. Later in the summer we received some adorable, hand-drawn thank you cards. The last part of their project was to create some art work. There is a great display at the Farm Table Restaurant in Amery of all of the art work and the reports the kids wrote about all the different farms they visited. This is such a great combination project and one I think the kids will remember for a long, long time.
Monochromatic mushrooms. Aren't they great!?
CSA season is nearly here!
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a way for folks to come together to support local farmers and make sure they can keep farming - and you get a box of veggies every week throughout the growing season. Many CSA farms now offer add-ons - extra items produced either by that farm or another.
Every year we offer a mushroom add-on through a number of CSAs - so you can have mushrooms in your CSA box along with all those yummy veggies! We are still working on our list of CSA partners for 2022. We're excited to be working with almost all the same farms from last year, and there is a new one or two in the works.
If you're in the market for a CSA veggie box and want some mushrooms on the side, take a look at any of these excellent CSAs:
Blackbrook Farm
Farm Farm
Fresh Earth Farms
Foxtail Farm
Good Acre
Growing Lots Urban Farm
Sweet Top
Threshing Table Farm
Turnip Rock - We won't have an add-on with Turnip Rock, but we'll have products listed in their online farm stand.
Lastly, we are bringing back our direct-from-our-farm CSA this summer - in case you already have a CSA and it's not one of those listed above.
Here are the details!
Pick up will be from our booth at the Mill City Farmers Market during market hours
Pick up dates are every-other-week from May 6th through October 22nd
What you get: in the course of 13 deliveries you will receive 10 third-of-a-pound boxes of fresh mushrooms, a reishi brownie, a jar of shiitake powder, and a mushroom butter.
The price is $89.61. (If you want to pay in cash or with a check at the farmers market it's $87!)
If you often shop at the Mill City Farmers Market and purchase our mushrooms, you may be wondering why you’d purchase a farm share instead of just purchasing from our booth. There are a few reasons:
You’ll get a great variety of mushrooms – including ones that aren’t available at our market booth.
Because our farm share is direct, we can offer it to members for a good value, between 25% and 33% less expensive than other market sales
Since direct farm shares are paid for ahead of time, you can step up to our booth and pick up your share with no fuss!
Please note: If you forget to pick up your share, we won't be organizing how to replace that share in a following week. It's just too complicated when we've tried that in the past This year, any unclaimed shares will be donated to folks in need of some fresh produce – and mushrooms! It will go to the MCFM Greens for Good program.
Go to our shop and look for our Mushroom Farm Share - the one that says "pick up at Mill City Farmers Market." There is another listing for a CSA, but that one is for folks who are with Farm Farm.
Spore got this little 'cat cave' from his grandma for Christmas. In typical cat fashion, he completely ignored its existence for about a month. But then I moved it upstairs and now he sleeps in it almost every day. It might possibly be because it's facing the heat vent, so it gets nice and toasty in there.
