End of Week One

Pouring the concrete floor for the MPS.

The day began with us inspecting the structure after heavy rain last night. The roof was still intact but it had some water pooling on one side. We will have to figure out the best way to seal the roof and prevent pooling like this moving forward. Once the concrete experts arrived we started moving forward with pouring the floor. They started by better leveling the floor and then mixing the sand and cement in bowls. The process of making the floor took the team all day because it was all done by hand in small sections. They would mix the concrete in bowls, shovel it and make it even, and then use a small knife to make it smooth.

With the end of the MPS construction nearing, we need to make decisions about final supplies we've put off purchasing, such as the barrels for steaming the structure. We started reviewing our notes from earlier this summer and doing more research about the mushrooms we plan to grow and have realized the plans for the structure may need to be amended. The structure's design was entirely based off of our team's past work in Cambodia with straw mushrooms, but since we are also trying to grow oyster mushrooms, the two drum design needs to be reviewed. We decided that since our structure is very large, there is enough space to split it into thirds and use each section for different mushrooms and steps of the cultivation processes.

We could tell that the grain we cooked earlier this week was not going to work for spawning because of the terrible smell and how wet they still were, so we went ahead with boiling the fresh grains purchased in the market with our new bowl. This time we were successful with the amount of time we cooked them for and started drying them. We do not have towels or hairdryers like we did in the US so we had to use paper from our conference room. Tomorrow is our first day off so jarring the grain and continuing the process will have to wait till sunday.