Skip to main content

A fallen tree, mushrooms and me.

 Sometimes I think I'm more in love with the idea than the actual practice.

I'm basically a lazy man, more in love with the concepts of homesteading and building an edible lawn/food forest than actually putting in the hard work to make it happen.   Sometimes however, things happen that present you with unexpected opportunities....if your smart enough to take advantage of them.

 

Recently we had a series of wind storms move through the area, the winds toppled trees, caused several electrical outages and even managed to damage roofs and homes in the area.  Luckily no one to my knowledge was hurt and the damage was minimal.  We did lose power for a few hours but never once considered running the generator as we were tucked in all cozy and warm.

A decent sized maple tree did came crashing down in my yard on Saturday night and proved the old adage that if no one is there to see it, it does not make a sound.  Neither Sue or myself was aware of the problem till Sunday morning.  It was far enough way from our shed and home as to not cause any damage.

It did fall with enough force however to leave a good sized divot in the yard.

Again, I was reminded of the importance of having the right tools for the job.  I have a small electric chainsaw which is fine for the smaller branches but it simply wasn't going to cut through some of the larger pieces.   

I do have an ax and a hand saw, but again their use was limited.  I still don't have the right tools sometimes...but I am friends with those that do.

Luckily my good buddy Doug had a proper chainsaw and could be bribed with dinner and a cold beer.   In roughly three hours we had the tree cut apart into much more manageable pieces.  Friends of ours have a wood splitter and will gladly haul off the larger chunks to provide warmth come winter in their wood burning stoves.

I learned some lessons since my first adventure with cutting up trees.  I'm still debating if I want to try and break up the larger pieces with my ax or simply take them to a friend with a wood splitter.

Another possible use for a few of these logs was the cultivation of edible mushrooms.   This appeals to for a few reasons, in that if I'm trying to create an edible food forest/lawn/landscape....it's another step in that direction.  Again however my only teacher would be either the internet or books, and did I really want to get involved in another project?

Again this is for a future that I may never see.   I know little about mushrooms, I've no clue on how long they would last or even if they would come back year after year.  I'm not really a fan of mushrooms, while I enjoy the flavor they give a dish...it's the texture that I don't care for. 

The idea though fits nicely with the over all plan.  In fact, I love this idea...and I literally thought of it while sitting here, as I sat here writing.   A few minutes of research is not going to make me an expert but it does give me a bit of info to feed my curiosity further. 

Like I mentioned, I love the flavor of mushrooms, but am not a fan of the texture.  Still though the idea of fresh picked mushrooms appeals to me.


I do know that I'll be breaking up some of the sticks and mixing them with stones and leaves in the bottom of some of our containers, saving a bit on the soil and helping to provide a little bit of organic fertilizer to the soil.  Still other pieces of this tree will find it's way into my shed where it may be used for firewood.

Well I'm not doing this currently, I understand there is a whole method of permaculture called Hugel Mounds; where you try to mimic the forest floor

Everything should find a way to be reused, recycled or upcycled, although I know it doesn't always happen that way.  

I'm still a city boy, I'm still lost and confused and downright baffled by things but I'm learning.   Slowly.  Painfully at times, but I am learning. 

We'll get there. 



Labels:
Location: Stoneboro, PA 16153, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

What all the cool kids are reading.

On Marches, Strikes and being a keyboard warrior.

 This is not the America I grew up in.    It occurs to me that those days are long gone, and that I am probably looking back on those days with rose colored glasses as well.   However there was a time in America when, if two parties disagreed, they could hammer out some sort of compromise.   Where opposing viewpoints were respected.   Where, if a heated argument did break out the chance of violence was very low. I miss that America.    Recently I was threatened with physical violence for something that I posted online.   I ignored the comment, I didn't bother to respond to it.  Not because I feared the person - I've no idea who they were, etc. - but because I am a pacifist.  To respond to violence with more violence makes little sense to me.  Plus, it's been my experience that such people are paper tigers.   The anger that is felt however, by both the right and the left is very real.  I can no...
Post a Comment
Read more

Maybe it's time I got serious about solar

  When my wife and I bought this house nearly 6 years ago, we made some upgrades.   We put on a metal roof, replacing the original shingles, replaced the floor in the kitchen, both bathrooms and the downstairs den.  We ended up upgrading the pellet stove (twice!) and added some insulation; one of the jobs I want to do in the coming year is to insulate the garage, mostly to keep the freezers we have in the garage from becoming damaged. It's only in various home improvement shows that the work to improve your home is done all at once and somehow in 1 hour.  For most of us its an ongoing never ending project. One of the important improvements that I've been wanting to make but have kept putting off for various reasons has been solar panels.  Now, I'm thinking that it may be time to least do something. The main reason we have been putting off this improvement was cost and how long it would actually take us to pay off the panels.   I'm 60 years old now...
Post a Comment
Read more

Honoring the past - Thinking more about "invasive" plant species.

 Recently I've been giving some thought to invasive species.  I had received both positive and negative feedback on the blog post concerning kudzu and recently I came across a very well hidden, and very small, wild cherry tree while doing some yard work.  Since it's against the house it would have to be removed since the root systems could damage my foundation.   A buddy of mine at work was asking if I was going to transfer it, his logic being that it was a fruiting tree that would not only attract a variety of pollinator's but that the deer would eat the bark and cherries, keeping them away from the garden (which Sue and I swore we were not going to do this year).  It occurred to me that I was going to have to do a slightly better job of identification, since black cherries are native to America , where as other types of cherries are not.  Being able to make a precise identification would be helpful.   I used to be able to identify all these tre...
Post a Comment
Read more