That's cool Heather. I spent about $30 on "Dowel" spores for my first try at it. I did 4-5 logs that were about 3 feet long. I put them in a shady spot in the forest below our house and didn't do a thing to them after that. I wanted to see how well they produced without any other messing around, and they did pretty good.

I am sure I ate more than $30 worth of mushrooms off of them, and probably missed more than I got. Really, you can hardly go wrong growing shiitakes.

We're still working on getting our business license (our accountant does that, and it's tax season), but we have about 400, 2ft logs inoculated now and we're getting 30-50 done a day, so we'll have them all done pretty soon. So far, people have shown a lot of interest in them, and that's just from family and friends telling others, so I think we'll do pretty good selling them. We'll start selling them in April.

We got all our logs (500, 4ft logs) off of 80 acres. It's really doesn't take many trees to get that many, and if you live somewhere near a plentiful source then it's generally pretty easy to talk forest land owners into selling a few trees. You might want to look into making and selling mushroom logs up there.

Here I am with two helpers just a couple days ago (I'm the old guy on the right):



We've been having a lot of fun making them. I drill holes and those two youngsters plug and wax them. They're not working very hard at it, and I'm not paying them much, we're all really just hanging out together and making a little extra spending money. When we're done they'll also get logs at the wholesale price and if they want to sell some they can make a few more bucks.

Honestly, my hope is that we can start a sustainable source of revenue that is almost entirely based on local resources, both human and raw materials, and market the end product locally so that most of the benefits from the productivity stay local.

If it does work, I'm hoping others here will start doing the same thing. That would really be a great thing. It would extend the opportunities for me, and those working with me, and multiply the benefits for us all locally too.

Winter is our slow season here, lot's of people are laid off from tourism related jobs, but all around us there are small, mom and pop owned, Cedar mills buying aromatic Red Cedar that is shipped all over the world. Everyday you'll see pickups with trailers loaded with 5ft cedar logs heading to the mills. The average load brings in about $400-600 bucks and two workers can cut and deliver a load every day or two. It's hard work, but it sustains a lot of families here in the winter.

In time, I think we can do the same sort of thing for our hardwoods with the least value. I would love to see a seasonal boost to the local economy based on harvesting trees in the winter in a manner that increased the timber value of our forests, provided higher quality habitat for wildlife, and provides an incredibly healthy, organically grown, food source.

I won't get wealthy doing this. No one will get wealthy, but from start to finish everyone involved will benefit. I think it would be pretty cool to have helped start something like that. If you have the trees there, you might be able to start something similar there too.

Even if you don't make a business of it, if you just showed them how to do it and in a couple years you could buy locally grown shiitakes in your grocery store, that'd be pretty darn cool

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I am beginning to work on growing things that are low maintenance and come back every year.

I got my first taste of home grown Asparagus a couple days ago. I should be getting some every spring now for years to come. My blackberries should start producing this year too. I planted them a couple years ago. Hopefully some of my fruit trees will bear something soon. I've yet to start a Dill Weed patch, but I intend on it.

You have your land now, and that means you can benefit from planting for the long term. That's pretty darn cool.