Back in 2008, or maybe 2007, we really can’t remember, Deanna and I had a phone conversation that was the jumping off point for this website. As I recall, we took the common blogger recommendation to stockpile a few posts before we went “live” to make it look like we’d been at this for longer than a minute when the first few people happened to click on us.
Once we had a respectable number of posts, maybe four or five! we started publishing. It was very exciting. We checked Site Meter obsessively those first few days and weeks, and were amazed when we got 100 hits in one day. Imagine! 100 people reading our words! It was a kick.
All that is to say, drumroll, please:
This is our one thousandth post.
Deanna, we should really get together and read them all in a marathon session. How about matching 1000 Posts t-shirts? I’d settle for girls’ lunch out.
That said, our 1000th post can’t be about just that. It should be about something we talked about in that seminal phone conversation: Remember how we both realized we wanted to grow mushrooms? See that fallen giant oak in the picture?
Tired of carefully inoculating logs with mushroom spawn one day (it’s hard work!), I took some leftover spawn and just rubbed it all over that tree trunk. I tucked it in cracks and crevices and basically forgot about it. It was the mushrooming equivalent of a hail mary pass. I really didn’t think any of it would take hold.
I was wrong.
Wonderfully wrong.
Six-and-a-half pounds of fresh Reishi, (Ganoderma lucidum) wrong.
It took two years for the stump to fruit, but it was a very nice surprise.
This blog has been such a nice surprise for us, too. Deanna and I are grateful for all of our readers. Thank you for taking time out of your busy days to read, to comment, to join in as we muddle through, make do, and sometimes just hurl one blindly in the general direction of the end zone.
Deanna, I raise a cup of reishi tea to you in salute and thanks for being there though a thousand posts, a thousand technical glitches, and a thousand (at least) phone calls and strange experiments.
Here’s to another thousand posts!
xoxo
Daisy
congrats! and many more <3
Congratulations on your success. I found your reishi mushroom info extremely interesting. I’ve seen those mushrooms all afound here on dead trees. Are they really edible? Where does one find mushroom spawn?
Mimi Mchale–Thank you! Reishi mushrooms are edible, but in the sense of tea, tincture, and dietary supplements. They are too tough and bitter to be considered edible in the sense of sauteeing them in butter, although I’ve heard of some people doing just that with very young specimens. I need to try that and see what I think. There are companies which sell mushroom spawn in the form of plugs you can pound into holes you’ve drilled in logs, or as sawdust spawn that can be inserted into said holes with a special tool. You can also sandwich spawn in between sections of logs, often referred to as the “totem” method. Other mushrooms are propagated on sterilized straw, or on special substrates. Some places sell blocks of substrate (like compressed sawdust or straw) already populated with mycelium ready to fruit. Try it!
Are these edible?
Yay! Congratulations! And hats off to you – lovely mushroom/chicken/strawberry ladies!
I hope to read many more posts from you 🙂
Neza–Thank you very much!
Wonderful post. Here is wishing you another thousand posts, at least. The mushroom pictures are really fantastic. I like the 4th picture which could make a nice poster. Blow it up and sell it on Etsy I say.
We have lots of trees on our property and occasionally one will be downed by storms or some such thing. I have seen these kinds of fungus throughout our property but didn’t know these were anything but fungi helping to decay the tree! Amazing that there is another beneficial use for them. Do you just infuse them in hot water or ????
Cheridal Nicholson–I make an infusion and I also am tincturing it in alcohol. Fungus IS amazing!
Toni Teaguet–Yes! They are medicinal and make good tea and tincture.
CV–Thank you! Good idea!