Fungal Speed Progress

I did not intend to do a double post today, but after reading post-publishing my last post (say that 10 times fast) I noticed a recurring theme, and I dare say it appears that I am stuck in a single vein. This blog is my think tank, and I usually run to my computer with flour covered fingers to capture thoughts as they come. I noticed while reading through my posts that most of them touch on either hastily entering or slowing down my pace, leaning more heavily on learning to slow down. It seems somewhat contradictory to me as I feel I have made little progress thus far to have the constant theme of slowing down. These first few months though, are where I establish my pace. Much of this endeavor will be accomplished alone.

While everyone loves to track progress and I feel my posts reflect little of that, until the pace is established, little true progress can be made. Also, elimination of unnecessary endeavors are also progress. While I would hate to call one of my staple "B's" an unnecessary endeavor, I just posted on setting beekeeping aside for the time being.

An important part of this plan is to operate it within my means. Buying more bees to re-start my hives would cost me close to three hundred dollars. After the hundreds of dollars I spent last year to begin beekeeping again here on the farm, that price tag is too high. I haven't given beekeeping up for good, but I am setting it aside for a more opportune time. Perhaps I will encounter a swarm once the weather warms, and for the little effort of setting up a trap, that might be my avenue back into beekeeping. But for now, looking at my time and money budget, chickens are moving to the forefront, and bees are moving to the back burner. I'll still be starting numerous herbs and vegetables from seed to grow and sell, along with a few other small endeavors.

One is learning about growing shiitake mushrooms. I recently signed up for a three session, log growing mushroom class to the tune of forty dollars at my local Cooperative Extension. The first class was a classroom introduction to the overall operation from growing methods to mushroom marketing. The next class is a hands on instruction where we will learn to inoculate logs with shiitake spawn and be given a single inoculated log to take home. I'm excited by this possible endeavor, but I wont be out drilling for a 600 to 800 log operation, as our instructor recommends for viable income.

I'll raise the one log, look into working a log structure into my design layout, and then see about additions in a year's time. It takes a year for the initial flush of mushrooms to appear. Once that first crop comes, you can have two naturally occurring harvests (typically spring and fall) or force the logs for a harvest every six weeks through the summer. This operation requires repeated soaking of four foot, 4-8 inch diameter logs, and handling of these drenched logs for growth. This may be beyond my vertically challenged abilities, but we shall see. That is the stage I am at right now- slow, steady experimentation and re-adjustment of goals until the practices that are right for me come to light. So I might have little to show for progress, but there are multiple areas of growth set in motion, even if they are hard to see. Much like a fungus on a log, I suppose.