Every spring Field & Forest Products holds workshops for interested mushroom growers and potential growers. Co-sponsored by the Shiitake Growers Association of Wisconsin, the workshops draw people from all over the United States.

What better place to celebrate than wilds of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, site of the great fire and this year's annual SHII-GAW Spring Cultivation Workshop. Learn firsthand how to grow your own mushrooms! Spend a day with growers with 20 years of experience -- visit beautiful Peshtigo, Wisconsin, for a total mushroom experience!

Workshop leaders Joe Krawczyk and Mary Ellen Kozak are co-owners of Field and Forest Products, Inc., co-authors of Growing Shiitake Mushrooms in a Continental Climate, and have traveled the world speaking about specialty mushroom cultivation. If you haven't met them yet you will be delighted with their homespun humor.

Here's what you'll get:

Mary Ellen Kozak and Joe Krawczyk Founders, Field and Forest Products

8-9 a.m. Coffee and homemade rolls during registration 9 a.m. Slide show by Joe and Mary Ellen on the basics of Shiitake cultivation, with information on wood selection, spawn characteristics, inoculation, fruiting, pest and disease control, and marketing. 10:30 a.m. Joe and Mary Ellen share tips on cultivating other specialty mushrooms outdoors on natural logs and other substrates, including Lion's Mane, Maitake, Reishi, Wine Cap Stropharia and Oyster mushrooms. Then our 2008 feature: Special 2008 Feature The Mushroom Pot: Explore harvest, storage, preservation and cooking techniques for mushrooms. We'll have a taste test! After a homemade lunch, (please let us know ahead of time of any dietary concerns), we'll head out to their family farm, which is now a commercial mushroom and spawn cultivation enterprise. Youíll see an outdoor laying yard as well as an indoor sawdust block fruiting facility. Demonstrations will be held, and everyone will be able to test equipment, inoculate a log to take home, ask those pressing questions, and meet your fellow mycophiles.