Log-Grown Shiitake Mushrooms
Fresh log-grown shiitake mushrooms are superior in quality, texture and taste compared to the mushrooms you’ll find in most stores which are typically grown indoors on supplemented sawdust and transported a considerable distance.
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Our mushroom laying yard, affectionately referred to as the Mushroom Kingdom, is nestled alongside the fresh Adirondack mountain water of Owl Brook beneath a canopy of hemlock, black birch and white pine. This location is a perfect spot to raise mushrooms with year-round shade and an accessible water source nearby.
During our main season from June - September we soak/shock about one group of shiitake logs each week. This ensures that we are able to consistently offer superior quality, fresh shiitakes to our local customers.
After the logs soak for 12-24 hrs they are arranged to allow for easy harvesting. Pins usually form within a few days and mushrooms are ready to harvest anywhere from 5 days to a couple weeks after soaking depending on the weather. Post-harvest, each log group is re-stacked and allowed to rest for 40+ days to allow the mycelium to recharge in preparation for the next flush. On this rotation an average log produces 2-3 flushes each season and will last about 3 years, producing 3-5 lbs of mushrooms over that period.
Where to buy our shiitake mushrooms
You can find our mushrooms in season at local restaurants and farm stores including:
Dogwood Bread Co. | Wadhams, NY
Clover Mead Café | Keeseville, NY
Essex Eats | Essex, NY
The Hub on the Hill | Essex, NY
Wine Caps
We also grow native wine cap mushrooms (Stropharia rugosoannulata), putting their voracious appetite for wood chips to work in our perennial nursery beds where they do an incredible job of suppressing weeds and decomposing the wood chip mulch into luscious compost for the seedlings.
Not only are wine caps great garden companions, they are a great addition to the dinner plate. While simmering in the skillet they give off a pleasant earthy aroma and when consumed they taste like potatoes cooked in a wine marinade. They can be used in place of portobellos in just about any recipe.
Wine caps fruit in the summer and fall. Flushes of wine cap are less predictable than shiitake and occur when the substrate is sufficiently colonized by the mycelium and there is adequate moisture to support fruiting.
Sustainable Log Sourcing
We harvest the hardwood logs used to grow our shiitake mushrooms from the wooded slopes and knolls around the farm with forest health and future production in mind. We selectively thin out suppressed and damaged trees that lost the race to the upper canopy allowing for increased productivity of the stand over time. These thinned low-grade, 4-8” diameter logs are typically chucked in the firewood pile. And while home heating is a valuable use of a farm woodlot, why not unleash the power of shiitake to turn these logs into nutritious and delicious food?!
When possible, we coppice or pollard the selected trees and prune the vigorous new shoots down to a few stems for future use. This works particularly well for species like oak and hop-hornbeam and is a technique used in Japanese shiitake production systems. This approach not only ensures a steady supply of mushroom logs well into the future, it also allows the tree to continue sequestering carbon and providing habitat and food for wildlife making our shiitakes an ecologically sustainable and renewable food source.
