Young people, fungi and hard work. Really!
The NC State Sustainability Office and the Center for Student Leadership, Ethics and Public Service took a group of students on a half day farm visit to Daniel Dayton, one of the People-First Tourism entrepreneurs in the Wake County network . Daniel introduced his farm to the students while explaining the challenges he faces to grow fresh, high quality organic produce daily to high-end Triangle restaurants. These restaurants are earning national media attention and it is often young idealist and hard working farmers like Daniel that supply their celebrity chefs with high quality produce. During the visit, the NC State students were engaged in real mushroom farm work that would have taken Daniel several days to complete. Their task was to collect a previously cut-to-size logs from the farm’s forest and carry them over to the workstation. Students then drilled several holes in each of these logs, and tapped plug spawns into each hole with a hammer until the plug w