By: Matt

We’ve just put in an order to the first round of spawn (mushroom starter) that will supply our Mushroom CSA. We’ve ordered two species of Oyster mushroom, pleurotus ostreatus… one variety is a blue oyster and one is a brown. We’ve also ordered spawn for Lion’s Mane and Reishi species.

Once the spawn arrives, it will be split up and added to new bags of freshly sterilized grain at a rate of 10%. This lets us take our starter (“Master”) spawn and expand it 10x at a time, so we have enough bulk to grow lots and lots of bags.

Because we have our own on-site lab, we can propagate our own starter instead of having to order it, saving us a lot of money in the long term.

Leslie Seaton from Seattle, WA, USA / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Renaudsechet / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Posted by: Matt

I have to admit, I have a terrible weakness for auctions. The twin lure of a great deal and a chance to compete to get the item I want make an auction an exciting and dangerous place for me to be. That being said, a mushroom farm needs equipment, and so auctioning I must go.

Not every auction will do. Our farm mostly draws from auctions that feature laboratory equipment, industrial supplies, and farm equipment. There are several type of these coming up, and I’ve got some items in mind for the farm.

The first such auction ended earlier this evening. I was bidding on several items that would have been great for our lab, but only ended up winning one of them.

Behold! A NUARIRE LAMINAR FLOW HOOD!
So, you may be asking yourself, why in the blazes would you need something like that? Also, what is it?

Well, a laminar flow hood is basically a filter and a blower mounted over a bench workspace. The blower forces a stream of clean, sterile air over and out the front of the bench. This makes a positive pressure area in front of the bench, so nothing in the air outside of the bench area can drift down on what you are working on.

This is important if you are working with petri dishes and want to make sure that nothing contaminates your carefully clean samples. We use petri dishes to propagate our mushrooms!

I’ve also got my eye on several other things to add to the farm, but we’ll need to wait and see…