The past few weeks have been too busy to write a weekly blog and that is really how it should be. This weekend is a break in a busy schedule. The shii-take logs have been really doing their best and have been producing plenty of mushrooms even without being soaked. The oyster mushroom logs have been much quieter but I expect a lot more perfomance from them soon. Orders have been flocking in from business colleagues and that has meant that the 100 cm logs have to be sawn to the right size and prepared for sale (string and label).
Every week from the beginning of October right through to the week before Christmas there is at least one extra activity planned every week: from an inoculation workshop to a mushroom mealtime, from an organized meeting for potential professionals to a seminar about Mycoforestry for forest owners. There are also the markets and garden fairs to attend, sometimes in the luxourious surroundings of a castle and other times in between the kitchen gardens of a local community. Visitors are sometimes tremendously enthousiastic and are at other times totally disinterested.
And in between all of the tumult of mushroom season the search for a new location for the Edible Wood Farm must continue. At the beginning of next year I must start afresh somewhere else on a terrein with water and electricity surrounded by / nearby to a forest with good access. The felling season will start halfway through January and I must know where I can bring the logs. Usually I harvest somewhere between 10 – 20 m3 each year from different forest sites. Also the existing supply of logs at the current location must be transported to the new place. My main method of transport is my VW caddy and a small trailer. Usually I can carry 1 – 1,5 m3 each time. Sometimes it is necessary/possible to upgrade the method of transport but that is dependant on many other factors. The distance from the forest to the new work location is therefore of much importance. The preferred situation would be to share grounds relatively close to the source of the logs and with people with a similar outlook on life.
I have already probed a few potential forest owners but they have either politely rejected my request or are still thinking about it.
Appointments have been made with several other forest owners….. whatever the outcome, the next few weeks will be compelling and important….. to be continued!
Photo: colleague Loes, Garden Fair, Castle Hex, 2018 September
