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.