Winter Garden

Xenji here, our resident camera phone photographer.

Here are a few photographs from our main house looking out at the land.

The beauty is humbling.

shitake mushrooms!

shitake fruits (mushrooms) here!  did you know that mushrooms are merely the fruiting body of the organism that we call ‘mushroom’?    the prolific and growing part of the creature is the mycilium which grows through a piece of wood or the forest floor or a compost pile, etc…

when the mycilium is ready to reproduce is is putting forth mushrooms which in turn spread spores through out the universe.  for real – these spores can travel through space undisturbed.

here we see the fruiting body of shitake mushrooms – a gourmet and medicinal, ancient food source.   i inoculated these fresh alder logs 4 years ago with shitake spawn.  i wrote them off after 3 years because they did not show any signs of growth of life.   just as we were about to reclaim them for firewood the other day, xenji and i noticed these little mushies bursting out!  what a joy!     we cooked them immediately and boy were they yummy.

in this case- 2 out of 14 logs fruited.  this gives me some hope that the rest of them might bust out and thus we will allow them to grow a little more, just till this summer…  if they’re going to fruit at all they will do it between now and late spring as it becomes warmer but still plenty wet.   updates to follow…

shitake fruits (mushrooms) growing off an alder log after 4 years!

i seem to have caught our bwoy xenji in a keen moment on the log hustle…  here we see a huge maple tree that fell over the driveway, onto a truck, onto a shed, and into the field.    in cutting it up we have the blessing of making this decision:  do we use it for great firewood next year or do we save it to grow mushrooms on?

fire wood or mushroom logs?

hardwood like this burns well and is very valuable for the hearth.  it is also ideal for cultivating gourmet mushrooms on.  again- very valuable.   to grow mushrooms on wood you need freshly downed logs… logs that are still relatively alive and not occupied by other competing fungal species.   we will split it in half – burn some and inoculate some.    after inoculation we will set them in the shade and hopefully in a year or 3 they will give us tons of food and medicine.

tons more info out there on mushroom cultivation.   google it.   also look at paul staments’ work up in washington…   fungiperfecti.com

thanxomuch! blessed sweet love!