Mushroom houses...

For those of you who may not know what an Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus Ostreatus) house in Thailand looks like, here's a photo of the inside of one. This particular mushroom hut has 1,000 spore bags and the mushrooms grown help to feed nearly 300 children and teachers at Hsa Thoo Lei Boarding House in Mae Sot. Thai Children's Trust have sponsored this house with great results. Twelve students from grade 9 to 11 and a teacher are involved in the cultivation and today's conversations with them confirm for us that they are very happy to have a change from their regular diet! They're able to harvest enough mushrooms for one meal every two days. Once the project has been established a little longer the idea is to sell the extra produce in the local market with proceeds being used to purchase more spore bags (the bags generally produce for between 4 and 6 months), make repairs to the mushroom house when needed and buy other food, for example, meat, fish paste and rice. The cost of a mushroom house this size is B40,000 or AUD1,500 (approx) or USD1,200 (approx). We've been looking at other migrant schools today - looking for motivated school directors and interested teachers that will be happy to take on a mushroom house. And we think we found a few. :)