It always feels like a weather switch is toggled over on September first. Mornings and evenings are cooler, if not downright cold feeling. There are a few leaves here and there that are turning colors and fluttering down from the trees. There is just a different feeling in the air - as if nature has given its all for the last several months and it is ready to start relaxing as well.
A sure sign of fall on a mushroom farm is when the Nameko start growing!
I don't think of Lion's mane as especially growing in the fall (we do pick them on and off throughout the season) but a lot of them are coming on right now. So they must like the slightly cooler weather!
The shiitake are doing well and consuming a LOT of time these days! Sometimes it feels like we're just picking all day long, day after day. It won't last forever, so we're busily drying and freezing some of the excess so we'll have plenty of dried and powdered shiitake for the winter months, and enough shiitake saved up for making our butters and pates. We have run out of several of those so hopefully we can find some time soon to make those before the holidays arrive!
Workshop alert!
The Women's Environmental Institute is hosting their 12th Annual Will Allen Farmer Training Weekend, Saturday September 25th to Sunday September 26th. We'll have a mushroom workshop as part of the weekend. More details to come, but you can learn more about the weekend at the WEI website.
Chick Check
I got the big fence up so the chicks can enjoy the outdoors every day. Those large leafy things are burdock. Since I took this photo they have stripped all of that and there is not a sign of burdock anywhere! Hmm - I need to rig up a chicken tractor and have them mow that stuff down in a lot of other areas. Ha!
The chickens prefer to lay around inside in a big chicken-pile much of the day and then venture outside again in the early evening - scratching for bugs and eating any green thing that has popped up. What a life!
It was a drizzly wet day on Friday, so Spore stayed in and made the most of his day - napping!
