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By THERESA REYNOLDS
Rappahannock Newt Special Writer
Centuries ago, Japanese peasants searched their woodlands for wild mushrooms growing on fallen trees. Called “shiitake” or “mushroom of the shii trees,” the fungus was such a delicacy that Samurai warriors living near a forest where it grew would claim the whole forest as their own, forbidding anyone else to cut the mushrooms from the logs.
Eventually, both warriors and peasants discovered that they could drag a shiitake log home and it would continue to bear for several years. By the early 20th century, Japanese scientists figured out how to cultivate the mushroom on any “shii” log, and by 1940, shiitake was Japan’s major agricultural export.
For years an ingredient in Japanese and Korean cooking served in American cities, the gourmet cooking boom of the 1970s and ’80s has created a sizable market for the mushrooms all over this country.
In Amissville, a retired engineer is hoping to fill local demand with mushrooms grown on logs cut from his small oak woods.
“I got the idea years ago from an article in the Washington Post" said Richard Ulf. “I read that mushroom cultivation required oak logs, shade, water and labor. I knew we had all those things, and I made up my mind to try raising the mushrooms here at Merymede.”
The Ulfs had been vacationing at a small cabin by a spring in Amissville for 30 years while Richard traveled with the Marine Corps and worked in
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