Paul Szmal: It is 839 as FLX Morning continues. Showers in the area, temperature at 56. We're joined now by Ryan Stachok from Cornell Cooperative Extension. Ryan, good morning. How are you this morning, sir?
Ryan Stachock: I am doing great, Paul. And good morning to all the listeners in the Finger Lakes. We want to talk about the shiitake mushroom log inoculation workshop. So we'll get to the specific times and places in a little bit. But first off, people have probably heard of shiitake mushrooms, probably eaten them, but may not know a lot about them.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, thanks, Paul. You know, one of the neat things about working with Cornell Cooperative Extension is bringing some new ideas to people in hopes that they will adopt these practices and find a lot of joy and success in doing so. And shiitake mushrooms and specifically cultivating them on forest products of New York State is really a cool new way to grow mushrooms. You know, shiitake mushrooms, the origins of them date back thousands and thousands of years back in Japan. And originally, people found these mushrooms growing on downed trees and people would take the mushroom logs and they would place them next to logs without mushrooms and hope that the wind would just disperse the spores of mushrooms onto those logs. Well, you know, thankfully with research, a lot of research in Japan and China has gone into growing shiitake mushrooms because they're a very popular item to eat. And we don't have to wait for the wind anymore. In fact, we can take shiitake and grow them on logs and really be very successful using products right here that grow around the Finger Lakes region, such as oak logs, right, that you may not use for other reasons. And you can grow mushrooms that you'd like to eat on them. And the reason you want to grow these is, well, there's several reasons you want to grow them. And one of the reasons is obviously it helps you do the kind of your own farm to table thing in a way.
Ryan Stachock: Yeah. You know, Paul, I'm a forester by training and my passion is really stewarding our forests of New York State and the region. And I just have a direct tie to those. And here where we can get a food product, we could take a forest product from our forests and be able to grow food. But on the front end, right, you may have heard, but our forests are very, they have a lot of challenges right now, including invasive species, regeneration is really important. And so actively managing our forests is really important. I like to tell everybody I love trees so much that I know that it's important that we have to fell or kill some trees around some trees to make them healthy and make our forests healthy. So in an effort to do that, when you have a forest that's overgrown or it's just not healthy and you need to thin the forest out, well, that costs money. That takes a lot of work and a lot of effort. And if we can get some type of revenue or value added from the forest thinnings, such as, you know, felling oak trees in your forest to favor other oak trees that you like and you want to grow large, what do you do with that oak tree once you fell it? Well, you could use it for firewood. That's certainly one opportunity. But here we could take another product, use our technology and research, grow mushrooms that we can eat, and not to mention you can make money out of this, right? So here's a potential revenue source for homeowners, for farmers that may have forests that need management. And, you know, it comes at a time of the year where you can inoculate logs, maybe once the harvest season is over, you can get that work done. And then the mushrooms will come and grow after several months. So there's a lot of different reasons to grow shiitake, number one, to eat them, certainly to help with your forest management objectives. And then, of course, to bring revenue, right? So some of these mushrooms you may have seen, Paul, like in the stores, they sell between $10 and $18 per pound. And what's really neat about these is that independent blind tests for food, right, have found that people prefer the taste of forest grown shiitake mushrooms to be superior in like flavor and freshness compared to other shiitake mushrooms in supermarkets.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Ryan Stachok from Cornell Cooperative Extension about the Shiitake Mushroom Log Inoculation Workshops. And again, we'll get to the dates and times of those in a minute. How does this whole process of inoculation work, Ryan?
Ryan Stachock: It's really pretty cool. Production involves basically taking fresh cut hardwood logs, usually, you know, I prefer red oaks. And then you take spawn and you drill holes into the logs. And then you take that spawn and you pack it into the holes and then you seal them up. And then you basically put them in a laying yard, you know, or basically under a forested shaded area for about a year, right? And then the log will continue to fruit biannually for three to four years. So each year you can benefit from these logs that you inoculate in year one. You can have three to four years of mushrooms once you force them. So there's a couple of different terms that we talk about, you know, like a bolt is just a log, a red oak log that may have spawn in it. It could be a couple of different species. And then once that log is inoculated, several, several months later, you can force it or flush and instigate this log to then send up mushrooms, right? It's called forcing or shocking this. And then, you know, you might have a laying yard where you have a whole bunch of these logs and then it basically fruits and then you harvest them. And then again, the repeat the process. So it's really a sustainable harvest, but it takes a little bit of uptime, a little bit of getting ready and, you know, a little bit of work up in year one, but then it can, you reap the benefits for years and years. So we're trying to get people to adopt this, learn about it. It's really fun. Some people really are into it. And so we're having some workshops coming up throughout Schuyler County, Seneca County and Cuyahoga County next week, Wednesday, October 29th, that'll be at the Apples and Moore Farm in Watkins Glen, Thursday, October 30th at Vince's Park in Seneca Falls, Saturday, November 1st at the Sterling Nature Center in Sterling. There's also another webinar that we want to touch base on here coming up on Monday, November the 3rd, that has to do with the Spotted Lanternfly.
Paul Szmal: Yes. Thanks, Paul. This is an important topic here that we want to make sure everybody in Seneca County is aware of. Again, one of those roles that's really cool about Cornell Cooperative Extension, we'd like to educate people on really important topics, especially when it comes to invasive species that impact our economic vitality within the county. So I just want to say upfront, I'm not the expert. I'll keep it to the very basics here, but we really want to drive people, all your listeners to attend the webinar. It's titled Spotted Lanternfly, Grapes, Tree of Heaven in the Finger Lakes, What You Need to Know. So this is about an hour and 15 minute webinar. So you have to have access to the computer. You can register for free, doesn't cost anything. You can register for free and you can go to our website, senecacountycce.org and register for that. That's going to be a Zoom link that will be automatically sent to you. And this is a really important topic because we're in year two of finding this species in Seneca County. So again, I'm not the expert, but we're going to have them participating on the webinar. And if you know, Paul, Spotted Lanternfly, again, it's an invasive species. It doesn't bite anybody. It doesn't sting you, but it does have an economic impact on New York state agriculture. So this species, they feed exclusively on plants that are outdoors and they can only survive like maybe 48 hours without feeding on a plant. And the reason that they could be such a nuisance is because there's so many of them. For people that have maybe traveled into Pennsylvania or maybe even a downstate New York, you've seen these adults and they're just everywhere. They're really a nuisance. So if people see them and we just, in fact, I was just helping somebody down in Southern Seneca County do the report recently. If you see it, we want you to report it, right? So if you see a Spotted Lanternfly, especially in areas where there isn't a known population, but we want, we want to know about these things. So take pictures of it, right? You could take pictures of the insect, the egg masses, and if possible, collect the insect, right? Put it in a bag, freeze it, or put it in a jar with rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer and keep it. Note the location of wherever you are, right? Street address, zip code, any landmarks, especially if you can use your phone to get GPS coordinates would be really helpful. And then send that information to the New York State Department of Ag with a sighting report. And you can find that online. And so we're really trying to bring awareness to this species and we want people to be aware of the realities about it. And so we're having this webinar. And again, the webinar is on Monday, November the 3rd, starts at six o'clock. You can register for it online at SenecaCountyCCE.org, SenecaCountyCCE.org.
Paul Szmal: We've got about another minute, Ryan, any other events we wanted to touch base on?
Ryan Stachock: Oh gosh, you know, Paul, thanks. We have a, it's a really busy month for us in Cornell Cooperative Extension of Seneca County. We've got a food preservation workshop coming up next Wednesday. That's the day before the Shiitake mushroom log inoculation event. So if you're interested in master fermentation, we have that coming up on Wednesday the 29th. And everybody in Seneca County, remember this Saturday, electronic waste recycling and document shredding. That's Saturday from nine till noon at the Seneca County office building. That's in concert with Seneca Meadows Landfill and excellent Seneca County employees. Again, please show up at 9 a.m. till noon. Bring your electronics, bring your confidential documents and have them shredded. We hope to see you this Saturday for a great recycling event.
Paul Szmal: All right. Thank you very much, Ryan. Appreciate it, sir.
Ryan Stachock: Hey, have a great day and cheers to the rain. Have a good day, everybody.
Paul Szmal: It is now 8 51 on FLX morning.
