Internship
Working with Edible Wood is a slow process. It takes two years for shii-take logs from the moment that the trees are felled to produce suitable logs. Oyster mushroom logs are a little quicker because they can produce mushrooms within a year. However, life behind the scenes is not at all sluggish and due to increasing interest days are long and weeks are short. All the basic necessities get carried out by a small team in the office and in the field but there is not much time for many new developments.
When a student from Wageningen University informed me that she was looking for a suitable internship I jumped at the chance. Marcha is currently carrying out a Masters degree in Organic Agriculture and joined the Groene Takken team a couple of weeks ago. She will stay until mid-February 2024. She has two projects. Her first project is to source areas of potential coppice (these relatively young trees are very suitable for turning into shii-take logs) and to help develop a way of encouraging the coppice owners / managers to working with Groene Takken. The second project is to give the current partners of Groene Takken a more visual platform on the website. These Care Farmers play an important role in the production capacity of Groene Takken and this way of working could be of interest to other small scale agricultural or traditional based (care) organizations looking to broaden and/or strengthen their activities.
