This spring at THF we set up 200 mushroom bolts; 100 spring and 100 winter. With care and luck we would have our first mushrooms in spring 2016. Being novices at all this, we believed the experts and settled in to wait. Imagine our surprise when last month Ron discovered a few early arrivals.

I was surprised at how lovely these shiitakes are.

And all of them so different.

Ron cleaned them off with a brush, reminder to all – never with water and checked them for assorted bugs. Then he sliced them up and tossed them into a pan with some of our minced garlic and lots of butter. About 15 minutes later he served them up to us. Sadly I have to say I still don’t like mushrooms. Jo, on the other hand could not eat them fast enough. That made me very happy.
For the next few weeks, we checked the logs again and were happy to see that no more mushrooms were out. Both of us tend to like it better when things go on accordingly to schedule.
We were away last weekend – story to follow – and it ended up being 5 days between farm visits. Ron headed out to THF on Tuesday after work just to check things. He keeps his boots in the Transit and grabbed Jo’s safari type hat to keep the bugs away. Good thing he had that as he came home with this –

He checked them over and we weighed them up

Jo told us that it poured rain on Saturday while we were away. The extra soaking must have triggered the “flush”. Ron got busy brushing and bug checking and then sautéed half of them. The rest I took to work to share with friends. Getting them hooked so they will be willing to actually buy them from us in a year or two.
Tonight we headed out again for more rocking picking in our soon to be garlic field. Sadly, no one else has showed us to help us. While Ron got the 4 wheeler turned around with its load of rocks, I headed out to check on the mushroom logs. And we had more. Not so much this time.
And I found a friend

We will have to come up with protection plan against the slimly slugs, deer and cute chipmunks.