Edible Wood Farm Journal: 2020 (7)
Hard work
The last month has been quite hard work with inoculating hundreds of logs and when I sit too long in front of the computer I lose the feeling in my fingertips. Painful pins and needles are the result and after an intensive bout of swaying my arms above my head the blood flow has recovered and I can continue my work. A number of times the last month I have gone to sleep counting logs and woken up spontaneously working out the number of plugs that would probably be needed the day ahead.
New habits
The feared “total lock down” was fortunately not implemented and I was able to travel to the various log farms, distribute a number of logs to other people, as well as working alot of the time at home. My neighbour became quite distressed at the sight of the many neatly stacked piles of logs in my parking place in front of my house. He did not understand my strategy and after explaining it to him, he still did not understand it. The stacks disappeared after a couple of inoculation sessions and so did the look of relief on his face once new stacks of logs arrived.
Thousands
The inoculation process at home was usually a dual process. My task was to drill the holes into the logs (approximately 17,000 spread over the last 6 weeks). By drilling the holes I could determine the inoculation pattern which is important for the distribution and growth of shiitake. Most of the time somebody else was hammering the plugs into the hole and now and then (after 5 of 6 logs) I would join my temporary colleague, friend or family member. With the appropriate 1,5 meter Corona distance between us it was quite a good way of catching up with news or for discussing various topics.
