Have you considered a food forest? It sounds like a lot of the hard work is done! Annuals, like a vegetable garden, would not love the wood chips, but perennial plants and trees do really well. Why not plant fruit trees, bushes and ground covers? You could plant a nut tree, or a little persimmon or pawpaw. I have these along with strawberries as a ground cover. Why not have free groceries and a stocked freezer! I have well over 40 types of fruit growing on my one acre and will be harvesting fresh fruit from May through January--not bad for my zone 5 Vermont climate! (The persimmons and medlars can hang on the tree through the winter, so maybe even longer!)
Mushroom spore is everywhere. The numbers are staggering. Wood chips would be a food source for the mycelium and the mushrooms are the fruiting bodies. Their job is to break down dead things, which wood chips are. It sounds like spores landed on the chips and started feeding; hence, the mushrooms! I'm actually growing wine cap mushrooms out back around some gooseberries, hazelnuts and mulberries. Each fall, I feed them leaves to keep them going and to keep the weeds out.
