First Harvest

After months of toiling with the construction of our incubation and grow rooms, hanging plastic, acquiring supplies, cutting straw, boiling large quantities of water, and inoculating bags of Gray Oyster mushroom spawn, we have finally harvested our first crop! On Tuesday we culled about four pounds from the bags that we had worked on a little over a month ago, selling our first pound to a local chef the very next day. I cooked up the remainder in some olive oil, adding rosemary, oregano, garlic and salt, then finished them with fresh lemon juice and served them up to my coworkers. The dish received a lot of compliments and my little sampling experiment yielded another sale, this time to our friend Amie.

Things are chugging along at a snail's pace at this point, but we hope to be able to put more energy into inoculation as the weather warms. In the meantime, we are feeling great about our accomplishments and look forward to the upcoming onslaught of fresh mushrooms!

Here are some pre- and post-harvest photos of our first crop of Gray Oysters:

Ready to pick

Gills!

In the kitchen

Time to cook 'em up