Years ago at the old farm I conducted performance trials on every strain or phenotype of Stropharia aka Wine Cap, I could get my hands on. The trials measured yields, frequency and quality of fruits in particular. Out of those 10+ varieties we trialed, there were 2 top performers I kept in our culture bank, they were dubbed "Mr. Beefy" and "Redstone".
Mr. Beefy was everything you'd expect from the name, large fleshy mushrooms with good heft that were aesthetically pleasing and delicious, however the frequency, yields and time to fruit after planting were lackluster in comparison to the best variety I trialed.
Redstone on the other hand was an excpetional performer in every facet of the criteria and is the variety seen on our youtube page on the trail cam timelapse videos.
Somehow in the move, the two cultures were mixed up and we've been selling Mr Beefy since we began this endeavor, not our intended variety of Redstone. Most folks would never notice, but I immediately saw it and have been dreading the inevitable righting of this matter. Below is a photo of both varieties, on the left is the Mr Beefy, it's large and has a softer beige-ish red hue. On the right is Redstone which displays dark red wine color and white scales as ornamentation.
Now before I go further, it's important to note that Mr. Beefy does produce mushrooms, does create soil and is attractive to wildlife, in short it does fit the bill of promised goods technically. However the Redstone variety is much, much better at all those things in my observation based opinion and is what I speak about when I discuss this subject.
As you know it can take a up to a year for the Mushrooms to appear, the fastest they've ever shown up is 67 days and longest is a year plus, much of that is due to site selection and moisture but some is strain specificity too. When I noticed it this year at the new farm it was the ultimate ohhhh crap moment. TBH it was infuriating, how could this have happened?
Despite replaying it in my head over and over trying to sift through the ether of conciousness about how it happened, I cant figure it out, but it did occur nonetheless and here we are. One further our new facility has been plagued with production issues in the last year and we have discarded more product due to contamination than I care to relate, matter of factly most folks would've thrown in the towel on the whole thing by now as a result. Perhaps it's my stubborness or romanticization but I'd like to think it was Gods way of saying, this isn't correct, start over and do it right. I chose to forego the trade show trail this year, I can't in good conciousness take an underperforming variety to market and sell it to folks, that just isn't right and I stopped doing podcasts and other media appearances last year when I noticed the issue.
So, here we are, starting over from scratch-ish, every bag of spawn in our current inventory has to be discarded, over 500 of them, most of which are 10lb bags and at 4-5$ a lb it stings to say the least. The good news is in March when the weather co-operates, I'll begin production again this time with the correct variety (Redstone) and in late April I will begin selling spawn again. In the meantime, you may elect to purchase now and select the ship when apropriate option at checkout to reserve your product for the spring ahead.
I could and maybe should have kept all of this in house and under wraps I suppose, but that's not how I operate. So, if you have purchased from us in the last year, you have received the Mr. Beefy strain from us and while it does everything it's supposd to do, it's not what I intended to deliver. To make this right, you can reach out to me and I'll gladly deliver a discount code for your next purchase.
I apologize to you the customer and to the subject of wildlife and fungi. Communicating this material is hard enough without me mucking it up and delivering the wrong variety, you deserve better and I will do better.
Matt