Dear Curiosity Journal,
Signs of spring surround us and a cluster of projects launch into motion like a flock of birds roused from their perch. Planting seeds, boiling sap, and plugging mushroom logs arise simultaneously, occupying different areas of the land and dividing the farmer’s time. Rufus completes a morning greenhouse planting and migrates to the barn where he’s boiling sap on the woodstove and inoculating logs on a nearby sawhorse. He has cut links of ironwood and now drills holes and hammers in the shiitake plugs, sealing them in with a waxy covering. This is our second flush of fungi logs and we’ve learned we need to keep them more moist this season to increase production. They tended to be at the end of the watering list after the greenhouses and gardens, often getting skipped, and quite thirsty in the dry spells. Each homesteading experiment encapsulates a teaching of how to do it better the next time around.
~Joy
