Well, winter has come and gone and we’ve been quite busy.  Taryn and I are working on becoming a certified organic mushroom producer.  At first we were worried about all the bureaucracy and the costs associated with getting organic certification.  Fortunately for us our state (and a few others) have certification reimbursement programs that refund 75% of the costs related to organic certification up to $750.  This program is actually a federal one that is administered by our state’s Department of Agriculture.  We have until October of this year to complete all the necessary paperwork.

In actuality, we’re finding the costs to be pretty reasonable even without the reimbursement program.  I think this is mostly due to the process by which we’ve chosen to cultivate mushrooms.  We’ve opted for traditional log cultivation.  As such, the process itself has a very small amount of what the USDA classifies as “inputs”.  We’re cutting down small hardwood trees in coordination with good forestry management practices, inoculating the log with certified spawn, and sealing it with approved wax.  This simple and natural process minimizes the number of regulations that affect us and cuts down on costs associated with lab testing.

We do need to have our artesian well tested for potability, but this is mostly routine as it is our main source of drinking water and not just an additional irrigation only well.  Being an artesian well and almost 500ft down it is also not as susceptible to ground water contamination, meaning we only need to be tested once rather than every year as would be necessary with a shallow well.  Regardless, the costs of this test is minimal, on the order of $40 or so.

Investigating suppliers of spawn and tools has been our biggest challenge, as we need to make sure the supplier is certified organic and that all their paperwork is present and current.  This is really just administrative work, but because of the nature of shiitake farming, one wrong move means the entire crop could fail certification.  Since each inoculated log will produce for several years this would be a great set-back.  The challenge (read: nightmare) of just starting again and having an organic and non-organic crop isn’t worth the cross contamination risk and also drastically increases our chance for running into trouble during the certification process for the new crop.

Fortunately for us we’ve been working with a local organic certifier that has really been a dream.  Bay State Organic Certifiers handles certification in the Northeast and I can’t say enough nice things about them.  Don has literally been an organic encyclopedia, explaining to us the process and answering all our questions in an incredibly timely and patient manner.  For two new farmers that are even newer to understanding the ins and outs of organic regulation this resource is invaluable.

Couple that with our landlord giving us his blessing to get the operation up and running and we really feel unstoppable.  Our friends have offered to come and film inoculation day with their HD cameras so we’ll make sure to keep you all updated.

This entry was posted on April 5th, 2010 and is filed under Agribusiness, Mushrooms.

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