The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Oyster mushrooms in the firewood

Wild oyster mushrooms in the firewood

Now that we finally have an operational wood stove, it's time to pay attention to the wood pile.  For most homesteaders, that would mean getting the wood entirely under cover so that it wouldn't be damp when they go to light a fire.  We do plan to cover up our wood, but right now I'm more interested in picking through the logs salvaged from the oyster mushroom tree to make sure we don't accidentally burn any innoculated with edible mushrooms.  Sure enough, two of the log sections are sprouting oyster mushrooms, so I snuck them away to live in the forest garden island.

Between me snagging mushroom logs and Lucy dragging off huge pieces of firewood to gnaw on, Mark has to chop quite a bit more wood than he should.  I don't know why he puts up with us, but I sure am glad he does.

Our homemade chicken waterer never spills or fills with poop.


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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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