Fungi Academy - San Marcos, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

Can mushrooms save the world? If you ask any Estonians you find up the mountain above the hippy haven of San Marcos the answer will most defiantly be a resounding "Jah". Just follow the mushrooms painted on the rocks up, up, up through to the pine forest and down the path to the Fungi Academy.

It's a challenge to choose so few words to describe this group, what they've done, what they're doing and where they will go. I can for sure say we are enjoying our stay here immensely. The self taught scientists up here are doing exactly what they want to be doing and believe in. They are dedicated to the cultivation of mushrooms and mycelium, spreading the popularity of fungi in general and teaching people how to grow and enjoy mushrooms themselves. They also live as a community which has long term core members, volunteers, (especially ones that bring interesting skill sets) and guests. All meals are cooked and consumed together. The household and property upkeep is also shared and I've been doing a lot of landscaping and digging new garden beds. The community is happy, healthy and fit from carrying everything: gas bottles, sacks of potatoes and 30,000 pounds of bananas up the mountain. There is no tuk tuk ride up here.

Oliver and Tanel lead the Tuesday workshops and teach week long courses which start with an inspiring lecture about the many benefits of fungi cultivation.

- Natural Medicine - immune boosters of both plants and humans.

- Healing the Earth - possibilities include cleaning petrochemicals.

- Soil Producers - single cell fungi prepared the earth for us by breaking down minerals.

- Garden Buddies - mushroom plant relationships help share nutrition.

- Water Filters - mycelium provides micro filtration.

- Medicine for the Soul - psychedelics
as aids in mental healing shows
great promise.

Above we have the queen of medicinal mushrooms - Reishi. It has been shown to boost the immune system, lower inflammation and hold off tumour grown. Reishi mushrooms have been used for their medicinal properties by the Chinese emperors for thousands of years. At one time it was illegal for common people to eat them but they would be rewarded if they turned them over to officials. Reishi can be consumed by long boiling tea, grinding it up for powdered pill capsules or there is an alcohol extracting method as well.

Chaga is King with similar health benefits as Reishi but with more tests pointing to added cardiovascular health as well. It's usually consumed as a tea and works best when broken up into roughly 10g chunks and can be boiled repeatedly.

So lets get a few things straight. Mushrooms are the fruit, mycelium are kind of like the roots or nervous systems and they are all part of the fungi family. The life cycle from spore to fruit is fairly simple

Two spores are needed to mate together and form mycelium which is a root like nervous system that links together a vast network of nutrition and information sharing webs through the soil or whatever it's inoculated into. When the mycelium reach full colonization or are 'shocked', like with cold weather, into thinking they will loose their nutrition source they start 'pinning' and mature into fruit - usually in the form of what we know as mushrooms.

These are 'pink oysters'. Oyster mushrooms are found all over the world and are hardy, easy to grow and delicious. These ones can be seen blossoming beautifully out of a grow bag. You can see how the bag is full of white mycelium roots which have taken over most of the space. There are some slits in the sides covered with microporous tape to allow for air exchange. When the mycelium have little left to consume underground (in the bag) they burst through the soil (slits in the bag) and get read to spread their spores. Just remember, incubation needs to mimic the inside of soil or a log which is dark. Fruiting needs to mimic finding light and air.

This perhaps is the most important picture of all. If you look closely you can follow the propagation process of fungi and see the steps taken to save spores, clone copies, expand cultures and inoculate other growth mediums.

The basic summary goes as follows:

• Mushrooms can be copied by taking a spore print (cut off the cap, place on a paper or foil, cover with a jar to seal off the air, spores will drop in half an hour) or cutting out a clean inside piece of the fruit and placing them in a petri dish with some nutrient rich agar or sugar rich liquid broth.

• From there you can save your mycelium or inoculate a sterilized growing medium. Here we sterilize jars of boiled grain by putting them in a pressure cooker and heating them to 120'C for 2 hours.

• After the mycelium start taking over, you can spread them to other non sterilized mediums like cardboard, wood chips, hay, grow bags, or trays.

• From there, mushrooms should grow if left in the right conditions depending on the species

These delicious white oysters on the right came out off of a grow bag and are bigger than my hand.

Above we have the lions main mushroom which is another medicinal that shows benefits for memory and mood. And below there are the distinctively tasting and ever so popular shiitakes

The good folks at Fungi Academy take their passion seriously and in style. Its not surprising to hear most conversations from a wide range of topics eventually narrow down to mushroom and mushroom cultivation talk morning, noon and night.

And when I say style I mean they are gazing out upon one of the most picturesque postcard views you can imagine while hanging out half clothed eating delicious organic meals and cooking up some other mushroom related plan for the day. I'm going to be here for a while and will go into more details about how a mushroom lab works.

Bonus: I made spicy hot sauce. Just take any peppers you have. Boil until soft. Grab whatever herbs and spices smell good together. Grind them up. And throw the whole thing into a blender with some vinegar and add other stuff like salt or sugar or fruit until it tastes right. Everybody loves hot sauce.