Well shucks Jason, you must be reading my mind. There most certainly was a home scale mushroom cultivation workshop - but it just came and went! Apologies for not getting you the info sooner. Rafter Sass of the Ecological Learning Institute and the Liberation Ecology Project taught a morning workshop on the ecology and life cycle of fungi and then led a hands-on hardwood log inocculation with shitake 'plug spawn' so that folks left with a log that should provide several flushes of edible fungi over the next few years.
We'll (the Burlington Permaculture group -
http://burlingtonpermaculture.googlepages.com) most certainly be offering more opportunities to learn about this. Hope we'll catch you the next time.
I had the pleasure of inocculating some straw and woodchip mulch with Elm Oyster and Morel spawn in an edible landscape I've designed and installed for a client here in Burlington. This is another way to create landscaping that is more productive food-wise and also helps speed down the decomposition of the mulch, thereby building soil in the process. It's pretty much a win-win scenario. Fungi Perfecti in Washington State has an excellent catalog and array of products for the home scale mushroom grower. Also, Paul Stamet's book,
Mycelium Running, is said to be a fantastic resource on the subject as well.
