The Food of a Younger Land (10 page)

L
ong, windowless, one-story oblong buildings dot the countryside of Chester County from Avondale to Kennett Square and West Chester. In these buildings, with their ever-present and essential manure piles, more than seventy percent of the country’s mushroom crop is grown.

The mushroom possibly graced the groaning banquet board of Lucullus, for the epicures of ancient Greece and Rome considered certain fungi, of which the mushroom is a species, great delicacies. The Roman poet Juvenal tells of a lover of mushrooms who thus implored some reluctant farmer: “Keep your corn, O Libya, unyoke your ox, provided only you send us mushrooms!” Horace of the golden age of Rome, both poet and farmer, said with some finality that mushrooms that grow in the fields are the best, and one can have little faith in other kinds.

For many hundreds of years thereafter the growth of mushrooms was left to the hand of Nature. In the seventeenth century in France the directed cultivation of them was carried on in caves, but in this country it was not until the twentieth century that their gathering and sale constituted little more than a child’s quest or a haphazard farm task. They were gathered in the pasture lands for the family table, or sold with the other farm produce for pin money.

 

 

 

I
n 1904 Edward Henry Jacob of West Chester, an accountant, recognized the limited supply and the ready market for mushrooms. From this came the realization of the commercial possibilities of their scientific production. Today approximately 700 growers within a ten-mile radius in Chester County have taken the “mushrooms from the fields,” and within their sheds have made the raising of “snow apples,” as they are known in the trade, a prosperous and thriving industry valued at $8,000,000 annually.

For successful growing, good manure is of prime importance, although within the past few years the use of manure has been displaced by the use of wheat spawn as a compost. This wheat spawn was developed in the laboratories of Pennsylvania State College by Dr. James Sinden, assistant professor of botany, and patented by him in 1931. He assigned his rights to the college, and a research corporation was formed to handle all patents. Licenses were issued to five mushroom-raising companies in Chester County, thereby assuring dominance of the industry within a limited area. The grain spawn is said to have reduced the cost of production one-third, and, at the same time, reduced the growing time of a better mushroom by the same ratio. The manure, or compost, must be fresh and from grain-fed horses bedded with straw. The nearness to the metropolitan market areas of New York and Philadelphia, together with the accessibility of manure from the stables of these two cities and from the farms throughout the countryside, made Chester County an ideal growing center. The advent of the automobile and the later mechanization of the farm caused a scarcity in compost, and the manure now used is obtained from brokers who procure much of it from the stables of police and cavalry barracks throughout the county. A large grower uses 20,000 tons a year at an average market cost of $7 a ton; after using it as a compost he sells it as fertilizer for $1.50 a ton.

In the past many a crop failure has been traced to the use of a compost of the manure of animals fed on sorghum, and alfalfa and molasses. The substitution of the cheaper sawdust and shavings in the place of wheat-straw bedding reduces the value of the manure, and requires more time and labor in the composting. The manure used commercially is now given a rigid chemical analysis and inspection to insure a high growing standard.

The fermentation of the manure is known as “composting.” A manure, well-strawed and protected from extreme dampness to prevent the subsequent loss from “leaching” (the result of percolation of water through the mass), is spread on a concrete floor. The compost heap is never piled less than three feet high and never more than four feet. If it is too low it will not heat enough, if too high it will heat excessively and dry out.

During the process of fermentation the temperature reaches 140 degrees Fahrenheit, but the most satisfactory result is obtained when a temperature of 125 degrees is constantly maintained for several days. At the end of a one-week to two-week period the pile is forked over, and the outside of the old pile becomes the center of a new pile. It is then well shaken and mixed, the dry spots watered, and the whole pile spread with two inches of fine loam to prevent too rapid heating during this period of fermentation, as well as to hold the heat when the bed is made. Every five days the mixture is forked over and new loam added. In three weeks the dark brown moist compost is ready for use.

The cultivated mushroom, the
Agaricus campestris
, belongs to a group characterized by the lack of chlorophyll or green coloring matter, which together with sunlight enables higher plant life to manufacture its own food, starch. As a consequence the fungus can be grown in the absence of light, and a measure of economy is injected in the construction of the growing-shed by the lack of windows. Care must be taken, however, that the buildings be draftproof and a constant temperature of fifty-five to sixty degrees maintained. The sheds are ventilated to insure a steady supply of oxygen and the expulsion of carbonic acid gas, given off by the growing plants. Tiers of flat beds, six beds high, of compost ten inches deep and approximately two feet wide are arranged along the sides and middle of the building.

Mycelium cultures, developed from the spores of previous crops of mushrooms, are introduced into bottles containing sterilized compost. In three weeks the bottled, impregnated manure becomes hardened; the bottle is broken and the spawn scatteringly inserted in small pieces about one inch below the surface of the bed. At this time the bed is held at a temperature of sixty or seventy degrees, and maintained at that temperature for several weeks thereafter. Within ten days or two weeks, when the spawn begins to run, or the thin tendrils of the mycelium spread, a white mouldlike growth appears. Then a casing, or shallow layer of rich pasture or garden loam, is spread over the bed. Six or ten weeks after the spawn is spread, white pinheads that develop overnight into “buttons” appear upon the surface of the compost. The mushroom is known as a button when the membrane or veil extends unbroken from the edge of the cap or pileus to the stem. As the plant matures the pileus expands in an umbrellalike manner; the veil, which in the button covered the gills beneath the cap, becomes a ragged fringe around the edge of the pileus, and a ring or annulus of veil around the stem or stipe.

The average commercial bed produces for a period of eight months to a year. A compost impregnated with a good strain of spawn will yield one-and-a-half pounds of mushrooms to each square foot of bed surface. The retail price of the mushroom will average from thirty-five cents to one dollar a pound. The introduction of air conditioning has made possible a year-round growing season. Previous to this innovation the season extended only from May to November.

Scientific advancement has become a two-edged sword in the mushroom industry. On the one hand it has lengthened the growing season; on the other the automobile and farm mechanization have seriously imperiled the existence of the industry’s prime requisite, manure. Mushroom growers are now hopefully turning to science’s latest advance, the use of grain spawn as a compost, to perpetuate an industry which in its growing-sheds produces a crop that ranges from 11,000,000 to 15,000,000 pounds annually.

ROALDUS RICHMOND

I
t is a keen morning in late March, the air like a knife, the sky clear and blue. There is still snow in the hollows and pockets of the brown earth, snow about the gray boulders in the fields and the bare trees of the woodlots. White mists rise from the snow-banked stream and fade in the early sun. Smoke plumes from the chimneys of farmhouses along the valley. Pine woods are black and somber on the far ridges, and the naked trees on the lower slopes have a gray brittle look. As the sun climbs the day grows warm. The snow patches soften and melt, the eaves drip, and in the sugar orchards sap tinkles into the pails. Farmers look at the weather and nod significantly. “She’s going to run today, boys, she’ll sure run today.” It is the perfect sugaring day.

The sugarhouse sits in a grove of maples on the broad hilltop. It is built of unpainted boards, weathered and worn but sturdy enough. A metal-covered ventilating cupola centers the pitched shingle roof. Cords of wood are neatly stacked in the open lean-to shed at one end of the building. The sharp tang of woodsmoke mixes with the sweet vapors of boiling sap. Steam from the cupola is fanned away on the gusty March winds. Underfoot the bare ground is damp and soft, and from the wood-lands comes the clean breath of snow. In the distance the Green Mountains are massed against the sky, their domes and peaks shining white in the sun.

Men and boys gather sap with horse-drawn sleds bearing large containers. The horses plunge and snort where the snow is deep, and the workers scramble from tree to tree, empty the buckets into the gathering tubs, hang the empties back up and plow on to the next maple. Sap must be gathered frequently because, like milk, it sours in the sun. In some of the more modern establishments sap is piped directly from the trees to the storage tank, but most farmers stick to the good old-fashioned way. Loaded, the sleds are hauled back to the sugarhouse. Voices ring above the rustle and scrape of runners, the creak of leather and wood, the jingle of bits. A barking dog scampers along beside the horses. The sap is poured into the storage tank, which occupies the cool north side of the sugarhouse.

From this tank the sap is piped to the evaporating pan resting on an arch over the fire in a long furnace of brick or iron. The evaporator is divided into compartments to facilitate the flow of sap and provide greater heating surface. Cold sap, admitted by the automatic regulator, forces the boiling sap onward. As it boils down the liquid increases in density and sweetness, passing from one compartment to another. Impurities are skimmed from the surface, and felt strainers remove the nitre, or “sugar sand.” In the last compartment a thermometer indicates when the boiling syrup has reached the required 11-pound per gallon weight. After the syrup is drawn off a hydrometer may be used to measure the specific gravity and make doubly sure that the official weight is attained. Old-timers used to estimate this with remarkable accuracy by judging the drip or aproning of the syrup.

There is real heat in the sunshine today, a forerunner of spring. The icy edge of the morning is gone. Bareheaded men work in their shirt-sleeves, warmed by the sun flooding through leafless branches. There is a sense of life stirring in the ground, in the trees, and the running sap is music in the tin buckets. Laughing boys stop to tilt the pails and taste the cool, flat, faintly-sweet sap of the maples. It is colorless like water but it has a pleasant flavor.

Days like this usually come in March and April, although sometimes they arrive in February. The average four-week season is from about the middle of March to mid-April, but it has been known to start as early as February 22nd, or as late as the first week in April. Depending on the weather sugar-making may extend as long as six weeks, or last only two. Abrupt changes in temperature, cold freezing nights and warm sunny days are necessary for a good run of sap. The season begins when the ice-hard grip of winter is breaking and yielding to the first invasion of spring, and it ends when the continuous warm weather takes command.