I’ve posted a few ways recently we’re propagating edible mushrooms at our sites for increasing production next year, and there’s another that’s very worth mentioning: turning cardboard and newspaper into mushroom spawn. Specifically, we’re growing mycelium of wine cap mushrooms (Stropharia rugosoanullata) in these, but I expect some other types…
Earlier today I went and harvested some oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) from a big dead maple we keep walking and driving past. I grabbed a small chunk of them last week, and since they were getting a bit dried out I didn’t go back. But then with a soaking rain…
This week at the mini farm we’re applying some design principles to more actively start cultivating an area of the forest for food production. We mentioned earlier in the year doing some selective cutting and debris cleanup in order to encourage some patches of berry bushes and small hazelnut trees…
Here’s some blue oyster mushroom mycellium growing in coffee grinds in a sterilized mason jar. We’re doing this with small batches of grinds to later innoculate garden bed mulch and hay bales, the later of which we’re also conditioning over winter to use as potato beds in the spring. Using…
Ostara came late for us, I guess? Real life egg hunt after finding a pile of 13 eggs near a stump I was checking for mushrooms. I guess we figured out why a few of the hens try so hard to get out of their run. Found another half dozen…
Leftists will often stress that the existence of hunger and starvation isn’t a simple matter of resources not being available, but rather of uneven and unjust distribution. More than enough food is grown for everyone in the world, and that’s typically only counting the output of mass, conventional agriculture. The…
No small “self sufficient” farm is complete without backyard poultry and they’re a part of the archetypical homesteading image for a reason: chickens are easy to keep, provide a source of protein and fat that gardens typically don’t, and allow a quicker conversion of food scraps into usable soil. The…
Autumn olive (Eleagnus umbellata) is one of our favorite things to forage and also one that we get the most of. This small tree isn’t native to North America, but it’s spread to a lot of the continent. Due to its fast growing and nitrogen fixing qualities, it’s been used…
Canning is one of those archetypical homesteading skills that finds itself in the mental picture we all have of the lifestyle. And this isn’t without reason; preserving food in glass jars by way of canning is an extremely useful way to make sure your valuable harvest doesn’t go to waste….
I grew up in what people would now call a “prepping” house. That term wasn’t in vogue for most of my life, but that’s basically what my parents did and as such, influenced how I was raised. Nothing like the Doomsday Preppers made famous by the show of that title…
