Tag: Off the grid

Happy Healthy New Year!! 2017

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Our products for a healthier and happier Year!!!  From Mr. Paul Stamets’ Mushroom company-Fungi Perfecti!

Our Fungi Perfecti products we ordered

Here’s our kitten Reishi having a look at the contents of the box.  

And this is the first item we see when we open the box from Fungi Perfecti – Paul Stamets’ Mushroom company!  How cool is that?  He is currently very involved with Bees and mushrooms and the health of bees in general. (Notice the pictures of the Reishi mushrooms on the magazine?)
And the products we received are Shiitake spawn in substrate, Pearl Oyster mushroom spored plugs, Lion’s Mane spored plugs and also Shiitake spored plugs.

You can see the packages of plugs with the mycelium already doing very well.

 

Ta dah!!! Our Christmas gift from my Dad and Jo Anne, a Bee outfit and a smoker…very high quality stuff!! Very nice! And a very excited soon to be Apiarist!!!  Both of us! 🙂

The new gifts compliment our Bee boxes very well don’t you think?  

The Ice Rink road….very treacherous!!  But funny to see the dogs slipping and sliding…

Getting our substrate ready to add the mycelium.  This was hardwood pellets mixed with some water and some rye grain powder to give the mycelium some extra boosting food.  We are mixing it up to get it ready to bag.

The white pieces are actually Shiitake mycelium getting mixed in with our substrate.

This is what our Shiitake grow patches will eventually look like (each bag we made)!!
First batch of Shiitake mycelium mixed with hardwood sawdust and rye grain powder.  If all goes well, we should be getting some mushrooms soon!! 🙂
These are the Lion’s Mane spawn plugs (Herecium erinaceus).  See all of the white?  That is the mycelium doing very well and these are the plugs that we are also mixing in with hardwood sawdust with some rye grain powder to make grow bags, aka patches.  Of course, we do not mix the different types of mushrooms together.  They are bagged separately, i.e., Shiitake spawn in bags, and then Lion’s Mane in other bags.

And these are what our Lion’s Mane grow bags will eventually look like.  Oh yeah Baby!  That’s right…..yummy! 
And this is what Lion’s Mane looks like in nature, growing on trees.  And we have foraged some of these beautifully healthy mushrooms already around our house, in the forest.

Oh yeah….and I might also add that…..we are growing these Lion’s Mane mushrooms at home, right now, (Herecium Erinaceus)…..if interested in reading/listening to a very infomative video (approx 12 mins)…. just copy and paste this link into your google search bar.   🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1POWQeIma8

The two bottom shelves are all of our Shiitake mushroom grow bags, and the lonely bag on the top shelf is the first of many Lion’s Mane mushroom grow bags that we’re preparing also.  

Here you can see the different batches we made with Shiitake, batch 1, batch 2, batch 3…. etc.  We ended making 5 different batches of Shiitake mushroom grow bags, and each batch has 3 bags, 2 big ones and one small bag, so all together there are 15 bags of Shiitake mushrooms.

And these beauty boxes are the products I ordered from Four Sigmatic Foods.  Super excellent and healthy site.  They make dual extracted powders out of the BIG healthy mushrooms…. Chaga, Lion’s Mane, Reishi, and they also use Cordyceps as well.  And of course they also use Cacao in their packets for extra flavor and extra goodness.  I wanted to try some out because eventually, we will also be making some dual extracted products with our mushrooms.

Here is a link to their excellent site.
https://us.foursigmatic.com/

Anyways, that is it for now.  I will keep you posted on our Mushroom growing adventures!!  ☺☺☺☺

December 27, 2016

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After all of the Ice rain…..

When we opened the door to let the dogs out, we saw our gravel road that was turned into an ice rink.

…too bad we couldn’t find our skates!


The plow was even having difficulties… he was slipping and sliding and actually had to drive on the shoulder, in the snow to ‘get a grip’…  🙂  And then, about 10 minutes later, the same plow guy came back, with a vengeance….it seemed like he was determined to not let the icy road defeat him. 🙂

Again…. trying to set up my blog to automatically post to my fb page.  Not as easy as they say it is!! 

Spring is here and Summer’s coming!!

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Maple syrup time!!

And we are starting to see some ground.  Ice is melting in the creek.

And some more grass is starting to show.
 Even the ponds are starting to show.
Soon time for the frogs to start their ‘thang’.

 It got really cold a couple of days and here is what the sap looks like frozen.

And of course we’re still seeing our friends from the forest.  Beautiful.  Just a few more days and then these Deer won’t be coming anymore to feed or just hang out because new growth and food is becoming more and more available to them.

And Jersey is watching these Deer…. thinking about how big these mice are!  😉
And this time of year means we get to spend more and more time outside…. enjoying the views and the smells and the sounds.  What a feeling.

There is Ozzy our Pug, if you can spot him… just chillin on the grass….

Jersey in a box.

Teenie in a the same box.
Our Home….Sweet sweet home! 

A snapshot of some of the different animals we get to see (Winter months)

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These pics show only some of the beautiful wildlife we see during the winter months.  I have so many of them and it’s difficult to decide which to display.  Here are just a few….

These are our ‘domesticated’ wildlife’… lol… staying warm together.  Living the life.

Our Beautiful house… where all of these adventures take place… those panels are what give us power!!  What a life we have in the middle of the woods in an old log cabin.

Here is a little opportunist, munching away at the birdseed.

This little cutie pie is who we have named Persephone…. when we first spotted this one, we gave it the monikor of ‘eyes too close together’, but decided it was a little too impersonal. 🙂

One of our three cats, sitting in front of the window with the deer in the background.  Our cats love to watch all of the animal action too.  In fact, the deer are used to seeing them now, sitting and staring at them through the window.

And in this shot, you can see a big old Owl sitting on the branch above the deer, just waiting to catch a squirel or a mouse, whichever comes first.

And here she is up close, just waiting for a meal.  We originally named it ‘Ovid’ the owl, until we learned that it’s a female… so I guess her name should be ‘Ovida’.

And again, here she is.  I say she because when this shot was taken, it was getting closer to spring and she is trying to feed herself to get ready to lay her eggs… so she needs as much food as possible, and fast.

Stay tunes for some more amazing wildlife pics.  And some fascinating stories of our life, in the middle of the woods, living off the grid!  🙂