With winter approaching there is much to do on the farm. Bulbs have gone into the ground, the last few flowers are dried, seeds have been collected, and planning for spring planting has already begun. Learning as we go along, we've made it part of our mission to create opportunies to share in this education with our community. In the process of starting this small farm, we knew we would be following the principles of permaculture, and more specifically, the Stamestsian method (put forth by Paul Stamets, American mycologist). And so we are thrilled for this weekend, when we will hold our first educational event on the farm. We're going to be inoculating logs in order to cultivate mushrooms like shitake, oyster, and hen of the woods and we've invited the community to participate.
Permaculture is an approach to growing that takes inspiration from flourishing and self-sustaining ecosystems already found in nature. The term was created by the joining of the words "permanent" and "agriculture". It is system, or set of systems, that model biodiversity, or the coexisiting interdependence of a diverse population of natural and biological organisms. The Stametsian method's premise is that habitats "have immune systems... and mushroom forming fungi are the foundation of the foodwebs of land based organisms." Thus a healthy growing system must include the use of fungi, as they are a cruical piece of any sustainable habitat (or farm). During our workshop we will learn about mushroom anatomy, identification, life cycle and for our purposes, inoculation and growing instructions. A suggested donation of $10 will go toward Generosity.org, an organization working to end the clean water crisis affecting over 800 million people worldwide.
