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I can barely contain myself.

Something I’ve been waiting for years to happen has happened.

In fact, it’s something that helped bring about the formation of this blog six years ago.

Deanna and I had been friends for ten years at that point, but somehow we never fully realized we shared a certain passion for the same sorts of things; growing things ourselves, making things from scratch, the sort of things this blog is about. Our friendship had centered around school and family and our respective generalized nuttinesses, but one day, one phone conversation, we realized we both wanted to . . . grow mushrooms. And keep chickens, too. And so on.

From that conversation this blog was born. Before I knew it, we had a registered domain name, a whole lot of unwritten posts, and even a book in our future.

BUT. Until this week, neither one of us had grown a single mushroom on purpose.

Now, my dear friend Deanna and my dear blog readers, I am tickled way beyond reasonable proportion to announce:

I have grown mushrooms.

And lo, they are adorable.

Witness:

IMG_5290Look at that little baby one at the foot of the mama one! These are Bellwether Shiitake mushrooms from spawn I got from Field & Forest Products. They are the cutest little things I’ve ever seen, on par with baby chicks and baby goats.

IMG_5305To make it even more exciting, I’d sort of halfway given up on mushrooms, having tried to grow them a couple of times before without any payoff. And while I knew having mushrooms would be cool, I hadn’t realized how absolutely photogenic they are.

Their rich brown caps decorated with white remind me of artisan bread fresh out of the oven encrusted with a crackled layer of dusting flour.

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I am still waiting and watching to see if the logs I inoculated with oyster mushrooms are going to fruit, but for now, I’m enjoying watching these little cuties get bigger and bigger every day. I’ve put them in what amounts to a cage to keep marauding squirrel paws off of them. If critters still somehow manage to get my mushrooms I will not be responsible for my actions.

MILD MANNERED GARDENER KILLS SQUIRREL WITH BARE HANDS

IMG_5297If you’ve ever wavered about how thrilling growing mushrooms could be, waver no more. Try it. Like most things that require patience, it’s worth the wait.

IMG_5298–Daisy