Building Access to Growing Mushrooms with the Squaxin Island Tribe

View the project final report

Commodities

• Miscellaneous: mushrooms

Practices

• Crop Production: waste substrate utilization
• Education and Training: on-farm/ranch research, workshop, youth education, Tribal community education
• Sustainable Communities: community development, local and regional food systems, food sovereignty

The Salish Place of Remediation Education, or SPoRE, is a community mushroom cultivation project in partnership between the Squaxin Island Tribe and Metamimicry. The SPoRE, located at and functioning as a part of the Salish Roots Farm, is helping to bring greater access to mushrooms to the Squaxin Island Tribe and broader community. At the SPoRE, people learn sustainable cultivation and experimental techniques, contribute to research projects, make medicine and recipes, grow remediator species, and grow fungi from culturally relevant, foraged finds. As a shared space, people are able to access resources, including equipment and books, for their own personal projects, increasing access to fungi for all. We aim to utilize the knowledge gained from this space, and from previous Western SARE research, to experiment with cultivation methods to include more locally produced waste substrates. Primarily, we will document this novel community approach to mushroom cultivation and produce learning materials for replicating the project, eventually sharing this knowledge with other Tribes and communities.

• Increase access to mushroom cultivation knowledge & techniques

1. 1. 1. Host 10 workshops and events related to mushroom cultivation, foraging, preservation, cooking, medicine making, soil building, and bioremediation at the SPoRE or within the Squaxin Island Tribal community.
      2. Produce educational materials, including 8 videos and 7 booklets on related topics
      3. Orient and teach specialized training to 5 farm employees, Tribal members, and broader community to use a cultivation lab & a variety of growing techniques 
      4. Provide farm tours to local schools, community members, and other tribes
      5. Create a guidebook for facilitating a community cultivation lab to be shared with other tribes and communities

• Increase the presence of fungi in food sovereignty efforts of tribes

1. 1. 1. Develop sustainable systems for growing culturally relevant mushrooms on local waste substrates, such as cannabis stalks and coffee grounds
      2. Create extracts, broths, & tea blends with medicinal mushrooms
      3. Hosted an intertribal SPoRE symposium with several regional tribes to share about this project, connect local tribal mushroom programs, and offer support for other tribes starting their own programs

• Enhance community-based sharing of mushroom cultivation resources 

1. 1. 1. Connect the Potter Valley Tribe’s community mushroom lab with the Squaxin Island Tribe’s lab to form the first tendrils of a growing network
      2. Invite regional tribes to learn at the SPoRE
      3. Integrate the SPoRE program into other Squaxin Island Tribal departments and programs, including Natural Resources, the Education Department, Cultural Resources, the Squaxin Island Museum, and the Northwest Indian Treatment Center

• Improve soil health at the Salish Roots Farm

1. 1. Contribute an on-site source of spent mushroom blocks to an actively managed compost pile for soil building
   2. Utilize substrate blocks contaminated with Trichoderma sp to increase disease resistance in orchard & other garden areas
   3. Inoculate garden beds with mushroom spawn to build soil