Mac Johnson

While I can't be sure on all the details of your situation, I do know this feeling. I love blueberries. And despite doing all the courses, all the methods, with all the right parameters and I still can't grow them despite trying for years.

I have had some success with mushrooms, though. If I had to guess, it's a moisture problem and probably getting dry. Not because you're not watering enough, but because getting some of these commercial strains started may call for more consistent moisture to get them established. For me, it was almost daily watering a bed of wood chips and layers of blue oyster sawdust spawn over landscape fabric. My easiest mushroom, though, was the wine cap or king stropharia. Several bags of mushroom spawn in a pile of fresh ash and maple chips sitting in a tarp in a small depression so the base of the chips were always sitting in water. I've used these chips in hugelkulter beds, my regular garden mulch, and just keeping weeds down usually at one part inoculated and one part non-inoculated chips. I've been able to pick mushrooms from these chips the first year and more every year since. I've added fresh wood chips every year and mixed them in and close the tarp over the top for a while in the cooler months or if it gets hot and dry out. The wood chip pile is also a good source of big mushrooms if you keep it in the shade. Aside from making a pile of wood chips, it's low maintenance.

I've failed on several mushrooms I've tried to start (lions mane, shitaki, chestnut...) but these two just worked. I think it was a moisture problem when I failed.

One of the things that would have helped me with beginning gardening would be a plan.  For most of my life I grew tomatoes, because that's what my parents did and I knew how to can/process/cook with them.  I often planted without a plan for the reaping and would be caught with too many melon or a bunch of onion I couldn't store more than a couple weeks.  

As for the residual income question, I'd think so.  Hoping to write some myself.  I'd love to hear about your process and experiences if you do.

My food forest is finally getting big enough to produce more than we can eat reasonably.  I've been playing with the idea of using fruit scraps (apricot, peach, apple, pear, berries) mixed with fodder for final fattening of livestock before butchering.  I run chickens, ducks, geese, and goats.  I'd gone back and forth on the morality of fattening but I feel like it is fine as long as the welfare of the animal is respected and confinement is not used.  The animals sure like it.  The calories should be there.  I've even heard of successful foie gras without force feeding.

Any one tried anything like that?  How would you store scraps for later use?  Fermenting/silage?

Avid reader myself and have read a few of these mentioned.  To be a little contrarian, my favorite book that helped me is the one that inspired me onto the path where I eventually found permaculture and it's gardening mania.  I've now read Walden Pond a dozen or so times and it inspires me every time.  I needed the why before I went down my path of how to achieve it.  Not a lot of gardening know how in this one.  It's a philosophy around naturalism and the Transcendental movement.  

One-Straw Revolution helped me bring Thoreau's words to the world of Permaculture and Sepp Holzer's Permaculture fully indoctrinated me.

Exciting times!  It sounds like you have a good idea of where to start and some good knowledge on the systems.

One thing I would caution you on will be space. That's a large lot for having neighbors, but once you start planting trees and their required pollinators you'll start eating into your space.  You can grow under trees, but the majority of production garden foods won't do well.  I have shy of 7 acres and am having to plan my space out to make sure I don't mess up with plans for the future.  I recommend drawing out a map of your property and where you want to plant/build what over the next 5 years.  Think about where the shadows will fall once the trees are full grown.  This process helped me winnow away at the things I wanted to do to make a feasible plan that I'm still following some 6 years later (with adjustments).

Get to tapping those maple trees sooner rather than later.  There's a learning curve, but your property is already producing delicious calories and great sweetener alternative.

Start looking for Food Grade IBC totes.  You'll probably be able to find a farm, manufacturing plant, or food processing plant that throws there's away.  20 minutes with a sprayer and soap and you can have a good tote for free.

Carla Burke wrote:You can also make yogurt cheese....

Definitely giving this a try! Muffins too!

Thanks, everyone! Going to give some of these a try. I made a half gallon, but it's just me and 2 kids at the house this week. Going to freeze some. I love cheesecake and naan!

I tried making yogurt in the instant pot yesterday. I was excessively successful. Just because the instant pot can hold that much milk doesn't mean it should. Anybody got some good baking, dressing, or other uses for all this yogurt.

Rich Rayburn wrote:


1. THE COMPLETE BOOK OF WOODWORKING, by Charles h Hayward.
2. EARLY AMERICAN FURNITURE YOU CAN BUILD,
By  Fawcett books.

Just a small correction, Rich. The book by Hayward is The Complete Book of Woodwork.

I wouldn't have said anything but I wanted to add it to my library after you mentioned it. Adding the "-ING" got me another book published much more recently. Even when including Hayward in the search terms. The Lost Art Press has a collection of Hayward's writing compiled and published in a series of books.

I've done paddock rotations starting last year with my goat/goose pen and my chicken/duck pen.  My plan this year is to overseed pasture forbs and grasses once the melting is done and to overseed lightly again when I close off a paddock.  The overseed mix I got is species specific for goats and one for chickens.  Come fall this year, I should know how well this plan worked.