Autumn was long this year. Warm temperatures during the day with an occasional cold night had triggered the shii-take logs into continuous production. In previous years the production usually slowed down to a halt around the second week of november. Late last week I picked the last remaining mushrooms from a handful of enthousiastic logs. The majority of the logs have now settled down into their winter slumber and just look like any other unimportant log in the forest. The next few weeks will be spent in sorting the logs according to quality and production potential. The logs will spend the winter in spacious stacks covered with a shade cloth giving them plenty of time to communicate with each other, reflecting on the past season and boasting about the season to come.
In contrast to the peace in the forest, my current life out of the forest is anything but peaceful. The webshop is running overtime and I have never had so much interest in Edible Wood and other related products. The corona-crisis has probably played a role in giving people more time to try out new (garden) products and to focus on health issues. My daily life is spent indoors doing administration and outdoors preparing logs for sale. Fortunately there was just enough time in between the standard forest activities in November to make a small film in English for an international online agroforestry symposium next year. Despite the corona restrictions several small-scale (corona proof) activities were fully booked in no time at all and lots of people have expressed their interest in helping out in the forest when the time is ripe. It is wonderful that more people are showing interest in “important” things, hopefully this will continue …. who knows?
