• :-)

    February 4, 2012
    a day in this life

    Free range eggs, chives and thyme from the pots on the porch and oyster mushrooms from the box!

    The only part of breakfast that had to travel far was the coffee.

  • I think it’s harvest time.

    February 3, 2012
    a day in this life

     

    I’ve posted the pictures as much to remember how long it takes for them to develop as to show off

  • February 1, 2012
    a day in this life

    I may never get used to how fast mushrooms grow. They do nothing, nothing, nothing and then you can practically see them growing.  This is the difference in 2 days!

  • Mushrooms!

    January 30, 2012
    a day in this life

    One night in December, we found mushroom kits for sale at Weaver Street Market.  For $20, it just wasn’t possible for me not to get one.

    This has been a very strange learning experience.
    You cut a cross in the plastic bag and then soak the brick over night in a bucket of water.  After that, you mist it a couple of times a day with a little spray bottle that is included in the box.  It did absolutely nothing for a week.  then, one day, there were little …. crumbs on one edge of the part that was exposed to air.  In 3 or 4 days, we had actual mushrooms.  I trimmed off the ones that had gotten big enough to eat and the rest of the sprouts promptly died.
    The instructions said that when you finish one crop, you can turn the brick over and repeat the process and get another crop.
    After completely giving up on getting anymore from the first side, I decide to try again.  The problem was that there was now a hole in the plastic bag that held the brick of inoculated coffee grounds.
    So, I cut the brick up and put the pieces, cut side down, in the plastic box that had previously held spinach and half filled the box with water.  We misted.  Nothing happened.  The pieces of coffee brick didn’t appear to absorb any water.  It just sat there.
    Last week I told Chuck that if it didn’t do something soon, it was going in the compost.  I meant to do it this weekend, but I got a nasty cold and it wasn’t doing anything but taking up space on the end of the kitchen table, so I never got around to it.
    This morning, I sat down to eat a clementine and happened to glance at the box.
    Let me just say, this is much bigger crop than came up with that cardboard box holding it.
    Do you see the little nublets on the top edge?  That’s more of them.
  • Bzzzzzzzzzzzz

    January 29, 2012
    a day in this life

    We went to a workshop in Pittsboro, yesterday.  It was about Natural Beekeeping.

    After we got home, it seemed we were inundated by articles about pesticides and how they are compromising the immune systems of bees.  Not killing them outright, just making it easier for other things to do the job.

    First, this:
    Bee Aware from Greg Stanley on Vimeo.

    Then, these:

    Bee Off in The Economist

    Pesticides blamed for bee decline in The Independent

    Dying Honeybees: It was the insecticides all along from ReaderSupportedNews.org

    More Damning Evidence Points to Pesticide as Cause of Mass Bee Deaths at CommonDreams.org

    I don’t think CCD is caused by one thing.  I think it is a sign of a systemic disease.

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