The Yellow House

I’m going to talk about mushrooms first, because I have, like, a lot of mushrooms at my house right now. Long-time readers will remember that Ben and I started growing shiitake mushrooms, kind of as a hipster-homestead-hobby, a few years ago (yeesh, I just went and found the post–it was almost five years ago). I haven’t written any more about it here, but we’ve kept it up, and find ourselves officially between a hobby and being quit-your-day-job shiitake mushroom growers.

You don’t really start working so much with mushrooms unless you’re going a little crazy or falling in love with them or both. Mushrooms are mysterious. When people visit our little mushroom operation, they struggle a bit with vocabulary to ask questions: “So you plant…the mushroom…spores?” Humans are generally conversant with ideas of roots and flowers and seeds, but we are not so everyday-equipped with terms like mycelium or spawn run.

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