September Showers Bring…Mushrooms!!! A story by Jim Pfitzer
September Showers Bring… Mushrooms!!!
Kneeling down to get a closer look, I read the little white plastic tag stapled to the end of the oak log. It was faded and smeared but barely legible still: FF-WW70-4/10–a record of the source, variety, and date plugged. Not all of our tags held up as well as this one. Some were missing altogether, others were broken or too faint to make out-the result of too many months stored in the corner of my yard without proper shade. These logs would remain anonymous until they fruited.
Even without a label the species growing in the log I was examining was clear. A nice crop of beautiful little shiitake mushrooms was just budding. A half-dozen other logs were showing the same promise and would be ready to harvest in a few days, and I have renewed hope for the other dozen-or-so logs yet to reveal fruit.
As indicated by the tag, the logs were inoculated nearly a year-and-a-half ago and, frankly, I had given them up for dead. For more than a year after plugging, the logs sat in my backyard with nowhere near enough shade. By the time I moved them to the woods of Flying Turtle Farm on Lookout Mountain, many of the wax seals were melted and the spawn gone. And yet a bounty of mushrooms is now emerging thanks to tropical storm Lee!
Many folks soak their logs or water them with irrigation systems to force them to fruit, but for these logs, nine-plus inches of rain did the trick just fine, and this morning–just four days after first encountering the crop–they were big enough to begin harvesting.
Matt Shigekawa, mushroom guru, fellow CSA share worker, and close watcher of the logs at Crabtree tells me that there is a nice crop coming on there as well, something Executive Director Joel Houser confirmed this morning, adding that shiitakes would soon be appearing in our share boxes.
If you don’t know shiitakes or what to do with them, you are in an 
ever-decreasing minority of folks as this delicious fungus has become the second most popular mushroom out there, behind the ubiquitous white buttons.
While I have enjoyed eating them for a while now, what surprised me two years ago (and again this week) was how easy and relatively inexpensive it is to grow shiitake mushrooms. With just a couple simple tools, some melted wax, a few oak logs and a bag of spawn, anybody with a shady yard or a patch of woods can be in business. And if you get a few friends together, throw in some beer, and make it a party, the inoculation can be a lot of fun!
My shiitake growing experiment began a couple months before our beer-fueled April afternoon when I attended a shiitake workshop at Crabtree, something Houser assured me will happen again this coming winter. Over the course of a morning, an enthusiastic group of students learned everything we needed to know, including resources for buying equipment and spawn, to get started, while prepping a mess of logs for the farm-a win-win for sure.
Look for tasty shiitakes in your box over the upcoming weeks and this winter check in with Crabtree about learning how to do it yourself. And if you want to help out, I will be cutting up a couple oaks on Lookout Mountain in the next couple weeks and having another inoculation party up here on the mountain!
A visit from one of Crabtree Farms’ neighbors
Robert Neal remembers growing up near the property where Crabtree Farms is now located. Now 83 years old, he still lives right next door to the house he was born in, and his backyard runs right into the farm. He visited us for the first time today since Crabtree opened over 10 years ago.
Mr. Neal told us about going down to the creek next to the farm and hunting for crayfish, and hunting rabbits where our Shiitake mushroom logs are now. He also recounted stories about the people who lived and worked here ago, and how there were even horses that grazed here. It was fascinating to hear his stories and about the history of the land we grow on! We are very honored that he stopped by!
Need a good recipe for Butternut Squash?
Soup’s On!
I don’t know what is happening down in the valley this morning, but up here on the mountain it is beginning to feel like fall–ironic given my most recent newsletter proclaiming the ongoing “dog days of summer.” The past few days I have donned a hat and sweater for my morning rounds and two wool blankets top my bed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that winter is here, or even fall for that matter, but we are entering that unpredictable seasonal weather pendulum, which can only mean one thing. It’s time for another all-recipe edition of the CSA newsletter–this time focusing on a couple of late summer reliables–peppers and winter squash.
Our first recipe comes fromPrairieland CSA in Sountern Illinois. They are using acorn squash, but try it with butternut or sweet dumplings!
Curried Squash and Mushroom Soup
adapted from The Moosewood Cookbook
3 small acorn, hearts of gold, kuri, and/or buttercup squash
2 1/2 c water or stock
2 T butter
1/2 c choppped onion
1 med. clove garlic, crushed
1 1/4 t salt
1/2 t ground cumin
1/2 t ground coriander
1/2 t ground cinnamon
3/4 t ground ginger
1/4 t ground dry mustard
few dashes of cayenne
6 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 c orange juice
optional: fresh lemon juice
optional garnishes: yogurt, toasted almonds
Split the squash lenthwise and bake face-down on an oiled sheet at 375 degrees F until soft, about 30 minutes. cool and scoop out flesh. You will need about 3 cups. Puree with the water or stock in a food processor until smooth. Heat butter in a soup pot; add onion, garlic, salt, and seasonings. Saute until onion is soft. Add mushrooms, cover and cook 10 minutes. Stir in squash puree and orange juice; heat gently. Adjust seasonings to taste. Stir in lemon juice, if desired. Soup does not have to be served immediately, and will hold on stove top. Serve as is, or topped with yogurt and/or almonds.
September Thanks, A story by Jim Pfitzer
September Thanks
It is September in Tennessee and, unlike in so many of our northern states where the sumacs have been bright red for a couple weeks already, we are still in the dog days of summer. Temperatures are still routinely in the nineties and summer crops, after months of oppression, have mostly given in. If we didn’t take the time to can, tomatoes we were so recently deluged with are gone until spring. Any summer squash remaining in the field is filled with bugs. Basil stands tall, woody and full of seed. For one lacking vision around the corner, looking across a vegetable farm field in September can be a wholly depressing endeavor.
It is a hard time for farms. The farmer tries to milk all she can out of this growing season–stretching it farther than is rational, while sometimes putting fall crops in the ground earlier than she should in hopes of closing the gap between summer vegetables and winter greens.
It is no less difficult a season for the CSA member to trudge through. So recently, a bulging box created wonderful challenges–how to eat it all before the next one arrives, or how to find time in the week for canning, dehydrating, or freezing. Now we look into our lightened boxes and wonder how we will supplement this small yield.
This is the nature of things when relying on farming for sustenance. In his Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold posited a “spiritual danger in not owning a farm…the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery.” How fortunate are we who have the luxury of buying into a farm and having the great reward of someone else’s hard labors throughout the seasons with only a small investment up front! And how much more blessed are we to have the convenience of farmers’ markets with a variety of farmers’ specialties, and grocery stores with trucked in produce to fill in the gaps during these “tween” seasons!
Beginning the season, the CSA farmer projects a value on the weekly yield and tries to meet that week in and week out. There are the occasional boxes that nail it, but the reality is that through most of thee season, and especially when the season is in full swing and crops are bumper, our boxes are nearly always valued greater than the investment we made all those months ago. Unfortunately, it only stands to reason there will be weeks where the value drags behind. I think we can call that time, “September.”
If you question my assertions, do a little experiment next season. When you pick up your box, weigh and list everything in it, then go to the health food store (because you cannot directly compare the quality of the produce in your box with what you find at a conventional grocery store) and figure up what it would have cost you to buy it there. Add that up over the season and compare it to your initial investment. Or, trust me when I tell you that the return is well in your favor.
With that in mind, how many times when your box was full of five or six varieties of tomatoes, heavy with summer squash, or overflowing with kale and collards, did you take time to thank your farmer for giving you so much more than you paid for? I am sure some of you did, but I suspect many of us never really thought about it.
And now it is September and the boxes are thin, but the farmers are still working as hard as ever. So let’s thank them now–now when they must be wishing more than you and me there was more to harvest. Now after working so hard all season long to keep things going. Let’s remember that while we have been able to drive our air conditioned cars from our air conditioned jobs to pick up our food, they have been getting up at the crack of dawn all summer long to plant, prune, harvest, wash, sort and box our food, and they have been doing it without the luxury of climate control. They do it in the rain, in the oppressive heat, in the humidity, in spite of drought, insects, sweat, and fatigue.
Yes, folks, it is September, and I for one am very thankful to still be able to pick up a box of food every week despite all the forces working against that happening.