It feels like every month so many changes and evolutions happen and March was no exception! Our mycelium has really taken hold and we are beginning to fruit furiously!
We were open the entire month and had our official city sponsored ribbon cutting event! You can watch some highlights with the two following links!
Thursday March 11th Ribbon Cutting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BEfOsw84PA&t=7s
Channel 6 News coverage video:
We have been madly creating spawn and substrate bags and will be hitting our full production cycle in a matter of weeks. Our goal is to be harvesting 150 bags of various mushrooms every week, and so we have been inoculating 150 every week! Our myceliation chambers are really filling up!
Avery finished the produce Safety Alliance Grower Training Course and the farm team is working on creating our Farm’s Food Safety Plan. Collar City Mushrooms is striving to provide healthy, nutritional mushrooms grown in the cleanest and safest environment for your enjoyment!
We added 3 new members to the team, Nick Waunsch has been officially added to our full time staff, Bree Morehead is now our resident Mushroom Travel Coordinator, and Kaya Rifenberg-Stempel has volunteered to become our volunteer coordinator and sustainability advocate.
We supported the Rensselaer Park Elementary School Burgh-Opoly fundraiser and we’ll have our own square on the Lansingburgh styled Monopoly map!
FOR GOFUNDME DONORS who donated at the lion’s mane tier of $50: We are continuing to scale up what we are growing, but our customer client list also continues to grow. Please coordinate free mushroom pick ups before you come to make sure there is enough in stock! (email Avery @ collarcitymushrooms@gmail.com )
We are starting a book club! Kaya Will be coordinating a Mushroom Literacy program! There are so many great Mushroom books to absorb. While Covid is still a concern we will be gathering via Zoom / GoToMeeting. During the month of April (and probably May) we will be reading Paul Stamets’ book, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. The City Of Troy Planners are very interested in exploring ways to clean up and revitalize some of the Industrial Brownfield sites, and we are more than happy to explore ways mushrooms can help!
If you are interested in joining our book club please email Kaya: volunteersatccm@gmail.com
Mushroom of the month:
King Stropharia (Stropharia rugosoannulata)
King Stropharia, otherwise known as wine caps, grow profusely in mulch beds. These easy to cultivate mushrooms can start on cardboard inoculated with mycelium under wood chips and will return year after year, as long as worms don’t find them! Worms love to eat their mycelium!
Competition winner:
There was no March Competition, but we’ll have one in April! Watch our Facebook Page to see how you can take part!
Coming Soon:
Stay Tuned for the following exciting updates:
Friday, April 2nd Spectrum 9 News will air a feature piece on Collar City Mushrooms! It will be available on their website afterwards as well.
The Troy Record’s Melissa Schuman sat down for an in depth interview for the Monthly Business spotlight piece. That will be coming out at some point in April.
The Collar City Mushroom’s team will be working with the student’s of Doane Stuart to install a King Stropharia mushroom bed on their green roof.
May 1st will be our first Local Art show featuring Peruvian Artist Amara Issel and live music by the Mr. Days Duo. We will have some hand passed hors d’oeuvres crafted from our in house grown mushrooms by Lansingburgh’s own Dave Chaiken. This event is contingent upon current COVID climate and restrictions on attendance may be imposed. Keep watching our facebook page for updates.
We have begun collecting art for a second edition of our mushroom coloring collection! If you are an artist and have a mushroom drawing you’ve done or have been thinking about doing that you think would fit in our collection, send an email to Avery @ collarcitymushrooms@gmail.com
Collar City Mushrooms 