There is a growing interest in our community to cultivate your own food and become more sustainable.  There is also an interest by many, in mushrooms in particular.  People want to know how to identify mushrooms and how to forage for them safely.  We receive a lot of questions, as agents, about how to grow your own mushrooms at home.  With the increased interest in mushrooms over the last year, the Agriculture and Horticulture programs decided it would be an excellent opportunity to collaborate on a mushroom class.  

For the first class we decided to host a Oyster Mushroom bucket make and take.  The class was open to everyone and at no cost to participants.  Participants would come, the agents would offer an educational lesson on oyster mushroom production and a demonstration on making a bucket.  Participants then repeated the process, making their own buckets to take home.  The program was widely popular and a raging success.  We had materials for 27 people to make a bucket to take home, but the class filled up weeks before the date so we had to schedule another repeat program later in the summer.  There were 36 people at the first class, many families with children.  Several class participants shared images of their buckets online after the class showing us how successful they were.  One participant contacted us for assistance on reviving her bucket after she'd let it dry out. Due to the enormous interest in this program, we plan to partner on future mushroom events in next years program plan.