Edible Wood Farm Journal: 2018 (15)
Production time
June is a really busy month with work in the weekends as well as during the week. The busy time has luckily now come to an end with the beginning of the summer pauze. During the busy period I am three days a week at the Edible Wood Farm carrying out numerous tasks part of the day.
Wet and heavy
On the first day a batch of shiitake logs gets soaked and is taken out of the bath two days later. A batch is 30 – 60 individual logs with a diameter between 6 – 20 cm and a length around 100 cm. The logs are heavier after having been in a bath and can weigh somewhere between 8 – 30 kg depending on its size and how many mushrooms it has already produced. The logs are then moved to a shady place in the forest and are leant against racks for the next phase of fruiting. Each rack gets its own label. The details of the soaking are noted in a clipboard and later added in an excel spreadsheet in the computer..
To fruit or not to fruit
Fruiting begins within a couple of weeks after the shock of being immersed in cold water. The mushrooms are then picked and the logs are sorted on the basis of producing or not producing mushrooms.
