—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, Jan. 1, 1977
42
' She's glad
when 'breaks'
" are ever
Mrs; George Blevins, a helper. She is wearing gear for picking in the
weighs a 10 pound basket of. dark mushroom house,
mushrooms which were fust picked;
Spawn shown at the side of a bed section.
*vfc—- n - ■
Mushrooms during a "break.”
? U *
By SUSAN KAUFFMAN
Feature Writer
After spending three or four hours in
the bameach morning, Jettie Mills
heads to the house because there is a
break, and the beds need attention. She
is not going to the farmhouse for a
leisurely,cup of.coffee and a chance to.
prop her feet up'to watch TV or read a
book. She is goiiig to the mushroom
house where a “break” refers to the
crop in its peak of production when a
solid white blanket of mushrooms pop
up all over the 24, five-and-one-half-foot
wide by 60-foot-long “beds”.
“This mushroom business is just a
side line for ns,” Mrs. Mills explains.
With over 100 dairy animals and 173
acres to tend to, Frank and Jettie Mills,
Nottingham, Rl, grow the mushrooms
for th? cannery-rather than for the
more involved catting and packing.
operations. “There is too much labor
involved in that kind of operation,”
Mrs. Mills adds. “We keep picking ours
a lot longer than those who cut and pack
for market.?!’;/
The Mills start picking early in
December and have big breaks usually
until the end of January with four
people picking every day for eight
hours. Then, throujgh’ April and May,
two people pick steadily four or five
hours each day.
" Actually, the Work on the mushroom
crop, as with other fanning ventures,
begins long before harvest. Mushrooms
don’t appear on the beds until 60 days
after the house is filled. The block house
contains 24 beds each five-and-one-half
feet wide and 60 feet long. Four rows,
six beds high, constitute what is called
a double house. The beds are built of
wood and filled with 140 to 160 yards of
mushroom compost specially prepared
with a mixture of one-half manure and
one-half synthetic materials. The
synthetic materials are generally
alfalfa or grass hay which has been
rained on before being baled.
A conveyer system and a work crew
bring the compost into the house and
the beds. The day after the house is
filled with the compost, it is steamed
for six to eight hours by an oil-fired
steamer brought on truck to the farm.
The steam is pumped under pressure
into the house through pipes so that a
temperature of 140 to 145 degrees
results. The temperature is held at that
point for four hours then eased down to
120 to 135 degrees for a week to 10 days
and finally allowed to drop to 80 degrees
at the end of 14 days after steaming is
done.
When the bed or soil temperature is
70 to 79 degrees, the spawn can be
seeded. Mushroom spawn is broadcast
by hand onto the beds by using millet or
some other sterilized seed which has
the mushroom spores or seeds coated
on it In a few days the spores grow into
a fine cobweb appearance all over the
dirt in the beds. Clear plastic is laid
over the beds to hold the moisture, and
the spawn is allowed to “run” or spread
for two weeks.
After growing for these two weeks,
the spawn is covered with a three
quarters of an inch deep layer of good
top soil with a pH of 7.5 or 7.6. The top
soil is taken from the farm itself and
sterilized before putting it into the
mushroom house. The process of
covering the spawn with soil is called
casing.
PYank Mills estimated that the
amount of soil used is approximately 48
quarts to a section. Each section is four
feet by five and'one-half feet
sections to a bed.
When the'spawn Starts comii
through the dirt, watering begins,
uses a hose with a rose-hea
tachment which provides * fines
He waters every day, skipping)
now and then. He can'water the 21
in an hour or an hour and a half.
“A light spray is better than too:
atone time,” he explains. “These
to be pretty wet for the mushroot
grow well.”
The mushrooms are grown u
dark at a temperature of 58 dp
with daily Watering to provide
needed moisture to develop the:
delicacies.
At harvest time the mushroom
pulled out of the dark by hand the
roots are cut off into a container an
mushrooms placed Into plastic bi
which hgld lO pounds each: l?ie bi
are weighed on scalesjchecked byi
inspectors so that accurate weight:
recorded. The tain
truck daily to local canneries.
This year, according to Mill],
price has been high with 72 ca
pound paid for mushrooms on De
The price has dropped 7 cents a p
r to G 5 cents this >week; Last yea
price averaged S 2 cents with 49 <
being~.pald in February apd 64 1
paid in May. After the New Year, p
drop with a drop in demand and
Homestead
Notes
abundance on the market. &
mushrooms grow best at aboil
degrees, air-conditioning is neces
for warm weather resulting in hi
pnees.
For the shopper to get the most r
out of the money she spends
mushrooms, Mrs. Mills suggests
choose those with the caps still
against the stem.
“They are never very pretty o
store when you are used to seeing I
- fresh and white on the beds like tl
she laments as she shows them grc
on the section beside her. “They
displayed in the stores in the light
light turns them brown. Really,
should be stored in a brown paper
in the refrigerator and kept dry l
used. Sunlight and water on them
ruin them,” she emphasized.
To make creamed mushrooms, a 1
as distinctive to Chester County
chow-chow is to the PennsyW
Dutch - wash mushrooms and df
Place them in a pan with a tight-fi
lid and cook in their own liquid for 1
minutes. Add condensed milk,
salt and pepper to taste. Thicken
flour and milk, Mrs. Mills ad v
“Never add water to mushrooms "
provide their own liquid.”
“We really like breaded mushr® 1
even though they are tedious to &
Wash and drain them; dip into egg
milk mixture, roll in cracker cm*
and deep fry.”
When a break means eight hotf
day pulling mushrooms, besides tW
or seven hours spent in the bam.J
Mills is more than glad when her W
is over!