Urban Farming Solutions

"What I had in mind was a dinner prepared entirely from ingredients I had hunted, gathered, and grown myself"

PART I - Food's Kitchen
By:Dentor Pang

Throughout the forest chapter, Michael Pollan laments our disconnect to the hunter-gatherer perspective on eating, and describes his past failures in attempting to harness the power of nature through less-than ideal means. From exploding fermentation experiments to poisonous fungi cataloguing he exposes some of the dangers of the do-it-yourself chef/agriculturalist but I feel he was onto something significant. In an attempt to explore this notion of urban cultivation here are some concepts/ideas that I believe are readily accessible and applicable.

First is an intriguing idea proposed by an architect with the concept of a kitchen designed by food as opposed to for food in order to strengthen our relationship with it. His name is Nick Sowers and the following illustrations are from his blog.

His approach to designing his kitchen is that most have a lot of wasted space; seldom-used cupboards and awkward vertical  cavities that are not conducive to storing everyday items. The solution? Turn said areas into dedicated fungi germination areas, providing the at-home gourmet with year-round access to exotic fungal species that would otherwise be subject to the laws of seasonality, scarcity, and most importantly, price-point. By creating temperature and humidity controlled micro-climates one could hypothetically turn their kitchens into a Dr. Frankenstein's Lab of various species of fungi and vegetation.

Sowers' functional cabinet designs account for the ideal growing environments for each species of mushroom, a slanted design and rotating storage space allows for Shiitake to grow and renew themselves on inoculated logs

This model is the, "Oyster Pocket Slider", which can be embedded into any existing wall, allowing for maximum light exposure control and surface area for the mushrooms to flourish. Notice straw substrate is ideal growing medium and sliding design offers ease of harvesting.

He even goes as far as installing hydration ovens to maximize harvest yields and shelf live. These innovative designs on kitchen utility demonstrate how hunter-gathering can be adapted to an urban cultivator situation and even increase the quality, safety, and cost of otherwise foraging for these labour-intensive delicacies, as Pollan discovers while searching for his fake chanterelles.

References: http://www.good.is/post/what-if-a-mushroom-designed-your-kitchen/#comment_stream