Week One: Intro

Our names are Rachel Hamburger and Isabel Steinthal and we are working on bringing small-scale mushroom agriculture to Sierra Leone. In late July and early August we will be traveling to Sierra Leone in hopes of building two functioning Mushroom Production Systems (MPSs). We are dedicating the rest of our summer to addressing all the unanswered questions about starting an MPS in a new country. Primarily, we are focusing on spore/spawn production. In Cambodia, V.volvacea (straw) mushrooms are cultivated and an individual spore vendor sells to most of the farmers. There are currently no straw spawn vendors in SaLone. However, P.osterous (oyster) mushrooms are commonly cultivated, making their spawn slightly easier to find. We will be attempting to grow both of these mushrooms species in our MPSs in SaLone.

Before we head over to Africa, however, we are going to attempt to grow our own spawn cultures at Lehigh University. We are starting with a grain spawning method, which we will attempt to execute next week.

Along with determining how to grow/obtain spawn, we will attempt to build a scaled-down version of the MPS on Lehigh’s campus. This is to ensure that our design and process is trustworthy.

If we successfully test and iterate both these threads we will be leaving very little up to chance in Sierra Leone, which is imperative for a successful venture. We will be updating our blog weekly until we leave for Africa, where we will likely update it every day.