The locals care.
According to the US Census there are 396 people that live in Hernshaw.
I quickly learned in the holler that people know each other by their pickup trucks. One of my favorite trucks is a dark gray Toyota Tacoma. Its driver is a man named Bill, who often-times stops in with his lovely wife, who is a teacher (most of the people that stop by have a key to the gate from the mining company and hunt the upper part of the mine. Word is the hunting isn’t that great).
Bill will come in and look around to see what the ‘young-ins’ are up to. Bill believes in the mushroom madness and spreads the word like wild-fire. He even gave Joe some deer meat and enjoyed some of the first batch of ours deep fried with his Thanksgiving dinner.
My other exchange for deer meat came from the Darby Clan. They drive all sorts of things. Scooby, which is his nickname at the mines, has two teenage sons named Dustin and Zack that are the most frequent visitors.
One of their vehicles is a sweet cherry red Honda Pilot two man, seat-belt included, all and any terrain vehicle. Zack drove me to the top of the ol’ surface mine in this thing to give me the lay of the land--and man does it kick ass.
He also told me a good place to get my haircut.
I’m post-poning my haircuts till we sell a enough of mushrooms to stay in business, so he’s probably on point on that one. Anyway, I really hadn’t understood the geography of the area and it was nice that he took the time to show me. Zack seems really fascinated with the whole grow room. It was cool to see somebody younger interested.
