Meeting Notes 2/29/16
jbsteinhardt
BAAM Mtg - 2/29/16
Mino’s house following a delicious dinner of wild mushroom pizza, many salads, chocolate, and blueberry pie.
Agenda
transferring of BARM to BAAM announcement list
president’s update and changing of guard update
project updates
lab update
meeting dates
Ken’s announcement
Legal and technical catch-up:
Joe explains who fills positions now.
Mino gives the treasurers report: we have money from the fair and memberships. $108 in petty cash; $271 in the bank but we’ve got $80 due from EBMUD (~$351); we’re about to pay Far West Fungi $350 that we’ll get back from EB Regional Parks. We also have 7 t-shirts left. $16 is the preferred price for the t-shirts.
Joe discusses switching over from the BARM to the BAAM list. $20/yr will get you on the BAAM discussion list. There’s two lists: BAAM member list (discussion — two-way street) is for paying members; the BAAM announcement list (one-way street) is for anyone (you don’t need to be a member).
Ken will post something about joining BAAM to MSSF and Marin Myco Society. Joe will pass out membership forms tonight since not everyone is officially a member.
There is some discussion (suggested by Max) about making the BAAM google group a forum on the website but this seems to complicated for the moment.
Ken: the Awesome Foundation met at the Omni the other day. We should apply. They give out grants of $1000, no strings attached.
President’s update:
Joe (as president) has appointed 3 people (Ken, Mike S., Enrique) to suggest candidates for new office positions by the end of March. Joe discusses aspects of the role of president. Please feel free to step-up to take on a position.
Also applying for grants is very possible now that we’re a non-profit! If you have any ideas…
Enrique: Are we insured?
Mino: Not yet. (But up to now, our public events have been insured by the partner organizations.) This is why we need a grant. It’s expensive.
K.O.: Stop Waste has grants/awards for orgs encouraging reuse and recycling (bio and plastic). They are the non-profit foundation of Waste Management for Alameda County. They encouraged the Bee Abundance project (part of the Flower Power Sewing Bee [?]). The guy at Peerless Coffee was able to turn his whole company into an eco-green company with their help.
Myco-forestry projects:
Mino: Eucalyptus project is happening! Mino, Sean and Sarah will pick up blocks tomorrow at Far West Fungi. There will be fresh cut logs (un-sprayed!). There are supposed to be at least 12 trees. We’ll crosshatch, mount, cover in burlap. We now also have plugs via Max — Eucalyptus grown in Laetiporous Gilbersonii (a.k.a., Chicken of the Woods) — so we’ll plug and wedge. We’ll get some of the extra logs to experiment with too.
For EBMUD, the project is in part solving a labor issue. They usually use spray to contain Eucalyptus growth so they don’t need to pay people to chop them down later. We’re signed up to monitor the stumps so we’ll have to lop off the stalks coming up over time.
They’re also cutting invasive pine to let the oak coming back.
We don’t yet know when the next volunteer day is because it’s up to the parks. We won’t need a lot of people but anyone is welcome to come.
There are many ideas for experiments and how to do controls.
Max brought the sticks/plugs that he made. It’s exciting that they’ve been so successful because it’s one less step: he put the agar directly into a sterilized bag of sticks with bird feed. There was no need to grow out spawn as an intermediary step. Maybe it’s not enough for a whole forest but it’ll work for stumps.
Mino: Let’s just put dowels in the bags from FWF and see if they jump.
Max: these may have an advantage over the FWF bags since those are on oak.
There is some discussion about whether or not to wait to inoculate the stumps, i.e., when they’re fresh or less fresh (regarding anti-fungal elements in the wood) but we conclude it probably won’t make a big difference since they’re still alive anyway.
Khue suggests using another species like Armillaria but Ken and Mino reply that it’s very invasive and considered quite scary by the park rangers for that reason.
Claire adds as a final note, control trees are very important!!
Joe suggests we write out a goal of data collection.
We also have a potential site coming up on Sutro hill off Parnassus with a ton of Eucalyptus already growing LG.
Khue suggest Crepidotus, which targets Eucalyptus. Max chimes in, if you find one, bring it to the lab!
We’ll have a meeting before our next work day so we can talk about it. Both will be announced on both lists.
=> Work day, March TBD.
=> Eucalyptus planning meeting will be Saturday, 3/5, 12-2pm. @ Joe’s house, 2018 Channing Way, Berkeley.
Lab update
Max and Ken report: partnership with CCL seems to be going well. It draws people in to both groups. Max is doing the lab nights. It’s cool! Teaching people how to make agar and other things. Encouraging others to become their own cultivators. Max has been burdened with cleaning up moldy cultures that people left in there, though. Come help clean if you can!
Supplies! A bunch of petris showed up. Max wants to get a bunch of syringes. (Mike Slama has some. Cool!) He’s making RTV [?] ports. We can reuse the syringes. (Sean can find a sharps container to dispose of them.)
We have plenty of grains, agar ingredients, and surgery sets. Max doesn’t like the surgery sets for different reasons. Joe can bring a whetstone to sharpen them up. The things we really go through are parafilm and petris. Glass petris would be great.
We need mouse traps. And it smells funky. Some of those smells are from the dehydrator with half-dehydrated fungi but some are probably from the moldy jars.
What about health of cultures? We could use slants since those keep better. Also, distilled/deionized water storage of agar works well.
A refrigerator would be useful. We have room for a mini fridge under the shelves. Electricity issues are happening but it’s in process, a bit stalled at the moment but ongoing.
Claire: let’s have a lab meeting to discuss projects. => date?
Joanna: it would be great to plan a fruiting chamber.
Question re: where the chambers could be to keep spores out of the lab.
Max really wants to grow some almond agaricus. He tried to cultivate from a spore print but didn’t work. Ken recommends Bernardii and Prince Augustrius. There are a few almond mushrooms — Max is into any of them. He wants to grow compost mushrooms. Claire also wants to grow shaggy manes on compost.
So if you find shaggy manes or almond agaricus, bring it to the lab.
Meeting dates:
Last Mondays of the month.
=> Next meeting: Joe will host, 3/28 (the day after Easter).
Announcements:
FWFPBBQ will be Sunday 3/20 Equinox weekend.
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Thanks to Mino and Fusako for hosting!
Thanks to everyone for all the delicious food and drink and thanks to all who attended!