Shiitake mushroom growing workshop at The Farm

The staff at Mushroompeople, the nation's oldest specialty mail order spawn company, will lecture, take questions, and demonstrate mushroom inoculations on logs to anyone interested in growing shiitake mushrooms commercially. The half-day course begins with brunch at 11, lasts approximately 4 hours and will cover the following areas:

Scoping out a commercial operation

Capitalizing and profit margins

Sawdust vs natural logs

Species of wood and selective logging

Selecting spawn

Inoculating natural logs demonstration

Managing the spawn run

Harvesting technique

Rest cycles

Forced vs natural fruiting

Packaging and storaging

Marketing

Participants will be provided with course materials, including the book Growing Shiitake Commercially. On site tours will be conducted of existing laying yard facilities. Tuition is $50 and includes a vegetarian lunch.

Spawn, tools, books and videos are available to purchase. Overnight accommodation also available.

Price: $50

Instructors are Albert Bates and Frank Michael.

The Farm is one of the largest and best known intentional communities in the U.S. Located on 1750 wooded acres in south central Tennessee, it is home to approximately 200 persons today. Founded in 1971 with a spiritual commitment to simple living and self-reliance. The Farm has pioneered a wide range of social and physical technologies appropriate to low-cost, high satisfaction community living. This tradition of entrepreneurship and progressive social change is embodied at our Inn at The Farm. The Inn provides comfortable accommodations for participatory training in all aspects of the village design and social organization for planetary transformation. The surrounding Farm community offers examples of solar building design, micro-enterprises, mushroom cultivation, organic gardening and regenerative hardwood forest management.