From Tree to Shiitake: Connecting NY through Mushrooms

This summer organizations from across New York State came together to provide an example of how we can begin to produce and move food in a more sustainable way. Urban farmers in NYC had reached out to the Cornell Small Farms Program looking for a source of logs for outdoor shiitake mushroom production, which are difficult to find in NYC. Steve Gabriel, who manages our Specialty Mushroom Project, began making calls and organizing an effort to connect upstate and downstate by moving logs to NYC. Tom Lindtveit begins this journey by thinning an overcrowded forest, which improves forest health in the long term and provides logs for outdoor shiitake production. Tom transported the logs to Kingston, NY where a mushroom log inoculation workshop was held for the public. Volunteers from the workshop helped load the Schooner Apollonia: a carbon neutral shipping operation plying the Hudson river. With logs in its hold the Apollonia sailed down the Hudson river to Red Hook, Brooklyn where the logs were unloaded on the RETI Center barge and biked the remaining quarter mile to Red Hook Farms. At Red Hook Farms members of community gardens and urban farms from across New York City came together to help inoculate logs and take them back to their farms. This example of a local supply chain is exciting both for the mushrooms that will be produced and for the relationships people and communities make along the way.


To learn more about the partners that made this project possible:

https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/projec...

https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/projec...

https://woodsmanforestproducts.com/

http://www.schoonerapollonia.com/

https://rhicenter.org/red-hook-farms/...

https://www.hrmm.org/

https://www.reticenter.org/



Civil Eats article about the project:

https://civileats.com/2021/08/11/buil...