A Fungus Among Us

My sister, noting that I have lived all these 42 years without a mushroom farm of my very own, brought me one. This particular fungus colony is of the variety that we lovingly call "Shitake". It is not a new farm, she has used it to make a "fruiting" (note the use of mushroom farming lingo already pervading my vocabulary) and she said it worked well and gave forth plenty of Shitake mushrooms. Note, no DNA testing was done, but she THINKS they were Shitakes. She ate them, anyhow, so...

Now she is passing the torch to me, so that I may carry on the Shitake lineage. This farm is a strange looking thing, even for something associated with mushrooms. A lump of "something" that the mushrooms like to grow on, she said it started out white but has since cured into a big brown lumpy mass of pulpy mushroom paradise.

After waiting the three weeks in between fruiting (almost there), I am to begin the process of re-growing the Shitakes. The process sounds complicated, but she assures me it isn't. It involves water and indirect sunlight. Which is strange to me, since I had always thought mushrooms needed darkness and...well...