My Search for Adventure

May 19, 2019

Visiting What the Fungus Mushroom Farm

What The Fungus
Mushroom Farm

I recently got the opportunity to go to a mushroom farm called What The Fungus (WTF). It is in Summerland, British Columbia and is owned by Brian Callow. I learned some interesting things about What The Fungus, the owner, and growing mushrooms while I was there.

What the Fungus

What the Fungus is a business that grows mushrooms! It sells mushrooms at local farmers’ markets and restaurants. Impressively, WTF sells mushrooms to about 45 restaurants. A crazy fact is they grow 600lb+ per week!

An interesting thing is that What The Fungus (WTF) is a seasonal mushroom farm. That means that they don’t grow mushrooms indoors and in the winter.

A cool thing it that WTF mills its own lumber and is the main supplier of unicorn bags in Canada. They have also made an new greenhouse design. It has a win-win partnership with Bartlett, a tree pruning company, because WTF gets free wood chips for production blocks and Bartlett doesn’t have to deal with them.

What the Fungus partly relies on offering a weekly course for people that want to learn about growing mushrooms (for more information go to What The Fungus.)

A sad thing is that they don’t do tours.

Brian Callow

I found it surprising that Brian used to work in a restaurant. It’s really cool that he builds his own machines through trial and error. One of Brian’s 2020 goals is to grow and sell 1000lb+ of mushrooms a week. It’s awesome that he has been growing mushrooms for 9 years. Brian has had a crazy amount of setbacks which makes him very persistent.

Growing Mushrooms

WTF grows mushrooms on a commercial scale by having test tubes with mushroom cultures which they transfer into petri dishes. Then they transfer the petri dish culture into grain spawn or sawdust spawn. Finally, they transfer the spawn into production blocks. The production blocks go into the labs to colonize. After that they bring the blocks into the grow tents outside to fruit.

Growing mushrooms in a desert is interesting because not a lot of people do it. The cool thing about growing mushrooms in the desert climate is that there are less bugs. He also has a few frogs to help him out too.?

Because it is so hot. WTF has grow tents covered in shade cloth that has shelves to grow mushrooms. Some other things that are helpful are that the grow tents have specialized humidifans which make a perfect environment.

To get an early start in the spring What the Fungus freezes cold tolerant species like Blue, Pearl, and Tree oyster mushrooms and the mushrooms fruit in the spring.

Some of my own mushroom growing goals:

I few goals that I would like to work on. Some of them include:

To one day work at What the Fungus.
To learn how to make my own production blocks.
To be able to take What the Fungus one week course to learn more about growing mushrooms.
To successfully grow a King oyster mushroom and a Tree oyster mushroom from two ready to grow kits.

May 7, 2019

Pond Update

This is an update of my pond. There are two parts to this post. The first part is called “Outside My Pond” and the second part is called “Inside My Pond”.

Outside My Pond

So today I checked around my pond and I was delighted to see that all but one of the plants were growing nicely, including the apple tree we transplanted last Summer. ?

The list of plants planted around the pond are:

Bleeding hearts
Rose bush
Lupine
Clematis
Iris
Hens and chicks
Lady’s mantle
Apple tree
Fern
Bronze canna lily
Sedum (Autumn gold)
Flowering sage
Peony
Some other plants I forgot the names of.

Inside my pond

I will give you the inside scoop of what is happening in my pond.

I cleaned out my pond about four to five weeks ago. I removed the some of the algae and dead leaves.

I got some exciting news to tell you!

About two to three weeks ago I started to hear frogs croaking in my pond day and night! We are still hearing frogs in our pond and sometimes they are very annoying. But I have even more exciting news! There are approximately twelve frog egg sacs and they look ready to hatch.

There is also lots of mosquito larva ? and some water beetles. I see birds drinking from my pond occasionally and our neighbourhood cats drinking from it too.

Well that is all of the news of the pond.

February 16, 2019

Pearl My Bunny

Pearl is a fluffy and soft bunny that is the color of a pearl . She is very cuddly, as cuddly as teddy bear and friendly too. If she is feeling lonely or someone in the family is feeling lonely she will come and snuggle with us and Pearl will make you feel happier. Her eyes are the colour of pine tree bark. With her floppy ears she looks so adorable. We give Pearl treats that taste good like oranges, apples, and celery. But one of the few disadvantages is her cage, which is very smelly so we have to clean it once a week. Her little heart beat is very adorable too. Pearl makes me feel happy when I feel sad.

December 6, 2018

A Magic The Gathering Card Based Story

“What just happened?” Xalvador asked Elenda.

“The last thing I remember is fighting the dark swamp monsters, Xalvador,” said Elenda.

“Do you know where we are or what time it is?” asked Xalvador.

“It is about 7:30 am and we are in the middle of a grand forest somewhere,” said Elenda,”but I’m not feeling good. Actually, I feel horrible.”

“You must have got the sickness of the black monsters. The only herb of that type is guarded by the gitrog monster,” said Xalvador.

Suddenly, a faint rumble in the distance got louder and louder.

“Oh no. Not siege wurms,” she said dreadingly.

Then they appeared, big wurms with steel armour and huge teeth in a huge mouth.

“RUN!” screamed Elenda.

But Xalvador stood his ground, drew his sword, and took his battle stance. The siege wurms charged at him. He dodged the first one and stabbed the siege wurm’s side, and the other one charged at Elenda. The first one was still alive and charged at Elenda’s other side. Which was not smart. Elenda dodged the siege wurms and the first one which is bigger but more injured ate the other one without noticing. Only one was left to kill, so Xalvador got his sword out to kill it, but Elenda told him not to kill it. It appeared to be cuddling with Elenda.

“It was trying to escape from the other siege wurm because his master was trying to kill him for insulting the gitrog monster. If it hadn’t seen us it would have died,” said Elenda.

“So it’s on our team now?” asked Xalvador.

“Yes,” she said.

“Could you ask it to let us ride it to the gitrog monster?” asked Xalvador.

“Yes, it will,” she said. So they rode the siege wurm to the gitrog monster, but Elenda was so sick that Xalvador had to hold her on his lap to prevent her from falling off the siege wurm. When they got there, the gitrog monster was sleeping. Xalvador sneaked and got some of the herb, which he fed to Elenda. Then, the huge monster frog woke up. The siege wurm attacked and injured the monster frog to stun it for a second, then Xalvador stuck his sword up the monster’s eye. This was so painful for the frog monster. Now, its blood dripping, the monster made its move. It jumped and very badly injured Xalvador.

“I can’t fight,” he said.

Then Elenda made her move. She cast a curse on the gitrog monster. Now unable to attack, the monster frog stood there Then the siege wurm went and chopped the monster in half. They left to find a village to help Xalvador, and when they found one, the three lived happily for the rest of their days.

November 15, 2018

The Mushroom or Fungi Hunt

Today I went on a hike at Pacific Spirit Regional Park. It is dark, cold, and misty, a good place for mushrooms to grow. It was supposed to be an insect hunt for my mom’s blog but it turned into a mushroom hunt. I had a good time finding fungi. My mom and me took pictures of remarkable or pretty mushrooms or fungi. It is crazy how many mushrooms there are in the world. There are about one million types of mushrooms, fungi, and molds. A lot of them are not discovered. Here are some pictures of the mushrooms/fungi we found.

I think that this fungi is pleurocybella porrigens but pins are hard to identify.

This is probably psilocybe pelliculosa which is poisonous.

I think that this fungi is pleurocybella porrigens but fungi are hard to identify.

This is probably pleurocybella porrigens.

November 15, 2018November 15, 2018

The Frog Problem (poem)

The Frog Problem By Felix Bergeron

There were some frogs
that lived in my house
they were a big problem
to my pet mouse

They tried and tried to catch my pet
I still protected my friend
by setting frog traps full of poison
I thought it would be the end

I got some burnanating guns
burned them to ashes
now that my pet is safe
I can celebrate!

November 1, 2018

Octopuses

Did you know that octopuses can change colour and texture? Octopuses are remarkable creatures. Octopus means eight legs. Unlike humans, octopuses have blue blood and they are mollusks so they have no bones. Their tentacles can fall off and they can taste with their skin. Octopuses have a beak to break crab shells and paralyze the prey. They have three hearts, two bronchial hearts and one systemic heart. Octopuses have a short life because they get eaten by sea lions and other creatures.

There are three hundred octopus species. That is a lot of species. I’m going to narrow this report down to the Giant Pacific octopus and the Southern Blue-ringed octopus. I chose them because they are very unique types of octopus. Here is a picture of an octopus’s anatomy that I drew.

	Giant Pacific Octopus	Southern Blue-ringed Octopus
Poison	low poison	very poisonous
Bodies	a mantle and eight legs	a mantle and eight legs
Size	size is very big	size is very small
Appearance	reddish brown	coloring is drab and blue rings appear when threatened
Habitat	from California to Alaska	along the coast of Australia in coral reefs
What they eat	eats shrimp, crabs, scallops, abalone, cockles, snails, clams, lobsters, fish, and other octopuses	eats lobsters, crabs, shrimp, and shellfish
Life length	about six years	about seven months

Southern Blue-Ringed Octopus. Image from OCEANA: Protecting the World’s Oceans.

October 4, 2018

How to Build a Fort with a Fallen Tree

Three weeks ago my family and I went to the forest behind my house. On the way to a fallen tree above a ravine that we like to cross, we found a newly fallen tree that was blown down in a windstorm. I think the tree was dying from something. We decided that it would be a beautiful spot to build a fort.

How I got My Idea to Build a Fort

I remembered a way that we built a fort when we went camping. It was made out of sticks and had bark on top for a roof. It has to be in a decent spot to make the fort big enough to be in. The bark has to be thick to hold out water and not collapse in hail.

How I Built My Fort

We found a good spot beside the tree that would easy to lay branches in a cross fashion to put ginormous pieces of bark. I could not do this alone I had my mom and sister to help me.

Some Problems and Solutions

The first time I went to build the fort I got a lot of small slivers in my hand. The solution was to bring gloves. Sometimes the bark is too curved or the branches are too thin but the solution is to take time and take good branches.

Plans for the Future

I plan to make the fort bigger and stronger in time.

I really like to build forts. It makes me feel like I have had a good and satisfying day.

September 27, 2018

My Mushrooms

This summer my mom got a lot of books on mushrooms from the library for something she was working on. She got a book on cultivating mushrooms too. I read it a few times and wanted to grow mushrooms.

Gathering Supplies

The supplies you need to grow a ready-to-grow-kit depends on what type of mushrooms you are trying to grow. I have only succeeded with Elm Oyster mushrooms so I can tell you how to set up for Elm Oyster mushrooms. You will need:

A spray bottle that can do mist.
An area inside that is in light but not direct sunlight.
A controlled environment. I set up in a small greenhouse with four shelves and a plastic cover.

Setting Up

Find an area where the grow kit will be out of the direct sunlight and where it will not be disturbed. Set up your kit there.

Growing the Mushrooms

When you are ready, cut two slits the shape of a plus sign in math. Making bigger slits will result in smaller mushrooms but more mushrooms. I think that the hole should be no bigger than two inches both directions.

Give the block (after you cut the slits ) two squirts of water.

The pins should start forming in about one to three days. It depends on the type of mushroom and the environment.

Touching the mushrooms will tell you if the mushrooms are too dry or not. They should feel wet but they should not be dripping. Do not directly squirt the mushrooms until the gills start forming.

The mushrooms are ready to harvest when the cap edges are almost flat.

Learning from Mistakes

I have made a lot of mistakes, but I learned from them. I also got help from Brian the mushroom guy.

The biggest mistake I made was covering my shelves with plastic. What happened was that the mushrooms made too much C02 and then they made long stems and died (see picture below). Eventually, I learned that I should leave the plastic open in the front to let oxygen come in.

Finally, here I am with a good wave of mushrooms! It is handy to have a journal to write down mistakes.

September 20, 2018September 20, 2018

Tutoring Time

Today in my tutoring lesson, we did grammar and Mad Libs. I wrote a silly story about a parrot. I like Mad Libs because it was funny and a waste of time! In grammar I practice quotation marks, subjects and predicates, and parts of speech.