time sure does fly
i've been in lebanon oregon for the last 3 weeks working on a mushroom farm where we cultivate edible mushrooms for markets, food shares and grocery stores. this place is pretty awesome, there's 2 pack goats, tons of crazy free range chickens, 1 free range 5 year old girl, a barn full of mushroom spawn and mushrooms fruiting from bags of straw. walking into the barn there such sweet smells and its totally the mycelium!! some of the mushrooms smell and taste like sweet almonds yum!
before we got here, reading paul stamets book mycelium running, we were getting so giddy over mycelium. now that we spend almost every other day with our arms elbow deep in mycelium i figure im fully inoculated with primordia forming as i type. this fungus stuff is great! the farmers here are really nice smart people. i've been trying to read as much as i can about fungus while im here just so i can ask them all the of many questions that come up. the process here is definitely indoor and commercial, but most of it i can translate to home cultivation on a smaller scale. im more excited about translating it to outdoor cultivation and using fungus for its many functions with the earth. using fungus for bioremediation, pairing it with plants to help the plants grow and using fungus medicinally. there are just so many sweet things about fungus.
now we are waiting for the weather to get more wet so that we can explore native fungus in its natural environment.

outside of the farm we went moonlight blueberry picking, explored eugene a little, went to the market in corvallis, visited some great friends, got showered in awesome jam from everyone! went tromping through the woods experiencing nature in a whole new way (looking for fungus!! and seeing decay as life and a cycle), i went swimming in river, met guys on a zero emissions book bike tour, befriended super awesome wwoofer Alma, squeeled while riding bike down hill super fast, became belinda: ruler of the wild chickens!, and plastered a straw bale structure (really productive fun with mud). there is another week to go here, which is exciting because i get to do even more new things and sad because me and kaitlin are parting ways (but hopefully we'll meet up again some where else superfun) and we wont get to eat bountyful delicious mushrooms daily.
next stop is a nice farm close by for a little over a week, then to california to another farm.

Bye Bye Little Rascals

Well, its been two weeks since I drove Belinda down to the mushroom farm in Oregon. I've been back up here at little rascals farm in Washington and it has been as crazy busy fun filled as the first two weeks we were both here. I'm definitely really excited to learn more about mushrooms, but also bummed that I'll be leaving this farm because it has been so awesome. Vicky John and Lindsay are so kind and wonderful, they feel like family already. In the past two weeks we have made Kim chi, pickled ginger carrots, apricot jam, chevre, cheddar, paneer, baklava, zucchini bread, I've learned to knit and made myself a pair o socks, washed and carded wool, seen bunnies butchered, and seen chickens with explosive diaherra. We gazed at stars and jumped in 40 degrees blue pool spring water. We had campfire sing alongs and made banana boats which are kind of like smores on steroids. I've spent hours petting those square pupil, blank stare, ice cream sandwhich little baby goats that will let you pet them and chew on your sweater all day if you stay there. I've fruitlessly thrashed through blackberries, saw the coolest beach fort ever at sunset on the puget sound, explored pikes market, and got bollywood, napoleon dynamite, and merengue dance lessons all in one night at a rooftop party in seattle.

I leave to rejoin Belinda at the mushroom farm near Corvallis on friday and will get to learn all about medicinal mushrooms and foraging for wild mushrooms. We will both be there till the end of August, and then hope to move onto another farm closer to Portland and hopefully eventually get a job again sometime.

Woo hoo!