It's been raining for at least 24 hours. That's a lot for us. THere's a huge weather front over the east coast of Australia and we're copping some too. Everything is tremendously pretty in the rain. Not so much when you're running around with a raincoat gathering all you need for teaching someone how to grow mushrooms in a bucket. Ah, never mind. Sometimes life is a bit of fun discomfort followed by tea and cake. Or mushrooms.
Lisa and her family live on acreage in town, and have been undertaking a journey of self sufficiency, homeschooling their three children under eight given the times we are in. She's English, far from home, so we can relate to her - Jamie feels the same homesickness and struggle to get by far from family. So when she said she was really wanting to learn how to cultivate mushrooms in buckets, but was a bit scared, I felt helping was something I could do.
All of my bucket mushroom growing kit is pretty organised - I have tubs full of everything I need, so I piled it into the van and went over. I also had a bucket of mushrooms that had grown where I'd left the bucket outside the back door - I thought they were done, but they had other ideas, especially in this crazy wet weather.
What I didn't expect was how much I enjoying teaching the little ones. The two girls were eight and seven, and the little boy was 5. They were delightful, curious and polite, and just a joy to teach. I passed chunks of mushrooms around, getting them to touch them and smell them, rubbing their wet tops.
'What do you think this is called?' I asked, rubbing my nail along the gills.
'FRILLS!' the little one shouted. I love how kids come up with perfectly reasonable names to call things. By the end of the day, they had added 'substrate', 'symbiosis' and many other words to their vocabulary. They already had 'mycellium' - as a permaculturist, their father had already indoctrinated them with the wonder of this beautiful aspect of nature. Never presume kids are dumb - we talked about soil acidity, mutualism.
'Oh! is that what bees and flowers do?' the eldest girl piped up. 'The bees get the nectar and spread the pollen for the plants?'.
Repetition is key for any learning experience. When I returned to put the cooled substrate in the buckets later in the afternoon, I asked them what mushrooms need to grow. 'LIGHT! WATER! WOOD!' they shouted. They were fascinated, realising that anything can be a growth medium for mushrooms, that they could be all different colours, and that there was bad fungi that farmers hated because it killed their crops, and good fungi that made forests grow.
How wonderful that these kids were going to grow up to not be frightened of mushrooms. I can't wait to take them hunting for saffron milk caps next year. The eldest girl was excited by foraging plants as well and we had a big conversation about plantain. She brought me her book on weeds and we went over it and was telling her what could be found locally. Mum and Dad were still very nervous about eating weeds but were eager to learn.
In the end, it was a busy day and I was exhausted, but I had so much fun and so did they. Mum felt more confident about growing mushrooms herself and had two buckets to tend.
Wouldn't it be cool to do this for a living - a mobile mushroom growing education van for homeschoolers and people who might be intimidated about growing mushrooms but have always wanted to try? There's some great online mushroom growing courses out there, but sometimes people prefer hands on, as they're intimidated by the process.
I really love teaching - I hate being in a classroom, but today taught me I am a born educator and how much I enjoy it.
With Love,
The Fungi Lovers Community: Home of #FungiFriday
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