Orders close at 10am. Everything after that is arithmetic: what the chefs have committed to, what Share members are due, what the market will need on Saturday, set against what the fruiting rooms are actually going to give us. By lunchtime Monday the week is fixed, and that is why the cutoff is real rather than a suggestion.
Monday afternoon is inoculation and substrate work — the invisible half of the job, and the part that determines what is available six to fourteen weeks from now.
Picking starts at five in the morning, in the cool, before anything has a chance to warm up. Each block gets looked at individually; mushrooms are cut, not pulled, and the decision about what is ready is made cluster by cluster. Cut product goes straight into the cold room.
By nine the boxes are packed, and the Boulder and Longmont run goes out. Restaurant deliveries land between services — the mushroom in a Tuesday-night dish was in the ground that morning.
Denver and the south metro. This is the day that makes the 60-mile radius work: one loop, several dozen drops, and the reason a Denver kitchen can have same-week product without paying a distributor to hold it in a warehouse first.
Back at the farm, Wednesday is a room-turnover day — spent blocks out, cleaned, colonised blocks in.
Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley, plus Estes Park when the season is running. Thursday is also the day the harvest forecast for next week gets written, which is what goes onto the harvest board and into the Sunday email.
The second cut of the week, same five o’clock start. Friday’s harvest covers weekend restaurant service, Saturday’s market and any remaining household orders. Friday afternoon is the only genuinely quiet window in the week, and it is when the drying and processing gets done — surplus goes into the dehydrators rather than into the compost.
Market morning is the best part of the week and the most useful. It is the only day we watch people decide, hear what they cooked last week, and find out which species need explaining. Half of what is on this website exists because someone asked about it at a market stall.
Sunday evening the harvest list is written and sent: what is cutting Tuesday and Friday, what is limited, what is new. Then orders open, and Monday at 10am the whole thing starts again.
If you want the short version: order by Monday morning, and you are eating something that was still growing on Tuesday.
Because the cutoff is not administrative. A mushroom cannot be made to appear on demand — the fruiting decision was made two months ago and the harvest window is measured in days. Ordering inside the weekly rhythm gets you day-one product; ordering outside it gets you whatever is left in the cold room. The Share exists to take the decision off your plate entirely.
Monday at 10am for the week. After that the week’s harvest is committed to the orders already in, plus market and standing wholesale accounts.
Because mushrooms are cut when they are ready and delivered the same day. Two harvest mornings — Tuesday and Friday — matched to the delivery routes mean nothing sits in the cold room for long.
Standing wholesale accounts get first call on both harvests and can adjust up to the day before. Ad-hoc orders depend on what is left after committed volume
Saturday market, and farm pickup by arrangement. Both are subject to whatever the Friday cut produced.
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