Nestled in the Mount Baker foothills we found Ostroms. I was talking to Mr. Gonzales before our tour and he said that he’s seen cougars walking in the field, black bear and eagles. Truly, Western Washington is like no other place on earth.
Pardon my sloppy job at masking faces. I did not ask permission to post these pic’s so I had to use MS Paint to color everyone in…pretty rough. ;) We are walking past the soil prep area which consists of dried chicken manure and fresh straw mixed together. It doesn’t stink until you get it wet…and they were soaking it…pew.
He taught how they mixed the soils, the adding of mycelium(?) and how it all works. They let the children all smell and touch the soil at different stages of decomposition, it actually smelled sweet and good. Really…it did.
Week 1. The first of three rooms..here the mycelium is just starting to grow. Everything is damp and cellar like.
Week 2. The next room there were little white round globules coming up from the soil.
Week 3. Harvest. Reminiscent of Jiffy Pop. Millions of mushrooms! I had to contain myself, it was almost too much. I was in a ROOM FULL of MUSHROOMS. Oh the JOY. 65,000 lbs weekly. Today they had harvested 11,000lbs already. These rooms are picked by hand three times over before starting over with fresh soil.
That’s a lot of fungus.
My children smirked at me and my camera. They knew I was loving it. I was so impressed with our group of kids. Not one child touched a mushroom(that I saw) and they were all at their eye level!
A beautiful shroom. He said they reach the store in 48 hours. I think I will go to Safeway Saturday and see if I can pick this one out.
16 month old + mandatory hairnet = stubborn child.
The packing room.
Mr. Gonzales was a great guide, very thorough and even gave the kids refrigerator magnets…but no mushrooms.
I tried.
Q and A in the parking lot.
So there you are a quick overview of the Ostrom’s Mushroom Farm in Acme. From start to finish we learned how commercial mushrooms are raised complete with a semi pulling out with a full load of mushrooms heading for the packaging plant! What timing. Thank you everyone for coming and those of you who so graciously took a rain check as our tour filled up and some were turned away.
What do you call a mushroom who can juggle & stand on it’s head? A fungi to be around.
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