Here at Willow Creek Mushrooms, we offer classes to people with a curiosity for mushrooms and mushroom cultivation. We try and break our classes into groups based on knowledge and experience. We recommend starting with the beginners course, and building upon the knowledge gained from it, further your learning with the subsequent classes.

 Kids Field Trip - Tour the Farm

Description: Take a tour of our farm. Learn about growing mushrooms, chase some chickens around, pet some fuzzy rabbits and stinky goats!

Duration: 1 hr

Cost: $5/person

 Lesson 1 - Basics of Mushroom Cultivation

Description: Lesson 1 will describe what mushrooms are, their life cycle, structure and the most commonly cultivated mushrooms. It will also describe the different substrates that mushrooms grow on as well as different mixes used. Additionally, we will cover mushroom cultures; where to acquire them, and by what methods. Ways to preserve cultures is also discussed, along with it’s methodology. Lesson 1 will finish with an informal tour of our facility to touch on the process of growing mushrooms and also give time for questions and answers.

Duration: 1-2 hrs

Cost: $25/person

 Lesson 2 - A Closer Look at Cultures

Description: In this lesson we go into more detail about cultures, describing how they breed, identifying different strains from multispore transfers, isolating strains and inspecting for a monoculture. The importance of sterile practices is discussed, as well as the supplies needed to work with mushroom cultures. Still air boxes are described.

Duration: 1-2 hrs

Cost: $50/person

 Lesson 3 - Still Air Box Work

Description: Lesson 3 will be a hands on class where, after going through sterile practices in detail, we will be doing agar to agar transfers, agar to grain, grain to grain, and grain to fruiting substrate.

Duration: 2-4 hrs

Cost: $100/person

 Lesson 4 - Growing Mushrooms: Putting it all Together

Description: Lesson 4 pulls together the content from previous lessons, and paints the big picture, including, what the process looks like from petri dish to fruiting chamber, understanding the timing and restraints of individual species, what day to day operations need to look like, and the importance of scheduled cleaning. We cover the process of making and sterilizing agar, grain, and fruiting substrate. This is a longer class, but we want to ensure that all questions are answered so that the ‘big picture’ is evident.

Duration: 2-4 hrs

Cost: $200/person