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 was flush with the bottom of the bark. Next they dabbed a thin coat of melted cheese wax over each plug using a bristle brush or a wax dauber to inoculate the plug. Finally, the logs were stacked back in the woods where they will hopefully fruit by September.  Besides the positive feeling of carrying out helpful and physical farm work, the experience also seemed to instil an interest on sustainable food production, even to the point of eliciting discussions about delicious recipes for the mushrooms.

Visits to small organic farms, like Daniel’s, are now available throughout North Carolina.  They are possible through the collaboration of a complex list of partners including Cooperative Extension offices, Tourism Promotion and Management divisions, Universities and other community organizations.  Perhaps this is the beginning of a counter movement from the table to the farm - where people delighted with the quality of fine local food dining, begin to venture back to the countryside to experience where that food came from.  This is arguably the source of the popularity of “A Chef’s Life,” a PBS reality show that is self described as: “Each episode follows Vivian out of the kitchen and into cornfields, strawberry patches and hog farms as she hunts down the ingredients that inspire her seasonal menus.”

  

By: Bruno Simões Ferreira

      Master of Science student in Equitable and Sustainable Tourism

      NC State