These Mushrooms Turn Wood Into Delicious Food (Here's How)

These Mushrooms Turn Wood Into Delicious Food (Here's How) My name is Zeb Combs. I live back up a holler in the Appalachian mountains with a milk cow, an old mule, and twenty hens. For nine years I have kept about forty oak logs stacked in the shade around our buildings, and in a good year they give my family between twenty and thirty pounds of shiitake mushrooms. No grow lights. No plastic bags in the basement. No thirty dollar kit that fruits once and goes in the trash. In this video, I am going to walk you through exactly what I do, in the order I do it, for about ten dollars a log. You will learn which wood to cut and when, the diamond drilling pattern my granddaddy used, how to seal the plugs with beeswax, where to stack the logs so they do not dry out, and the cold water trick that makes a log fruit within a week. I will also show you a faster way with oyster mushrooms, using the branches you pruned off your fruit trees this spring, and how Granny dried the harvest on old window screens so we had mushroom soup all winter. I am also going to tell you the part that might make you uneasy. The companies selling mushroom kits in this country know that the fallen tree in your yard can feed you for five years. They sell you a box instead, because a box you throw away is a box you buy again. And I am going to give you one serious warning. Some of the most dangerous mushrooms in North America grow wild on dead wood. Eat only what you planted yourself, or what someone who truly knows mushrooms has identified. If you are not sure, you do not eat it. This winter, find four fresh hardwood logs. Plug them, wax them, and stack them in the shade. Then tell me in the comments where you live and what kind of trees come down on your land. I read every one of them. And tell me if you plug a log. I want to hear how it goes. Next video: how Granny kept potatoes firm and sweet all the way to spring in a cellar with no electricity, using one thing from the barn you would never guess. Subscribe so you do not miss it. Stay patient. Stay curious. And remember, the people who built this country with their hands knew things we are only just starting to remember. #MushroomGrowing, #Shiitake, #Homesteading, #AppalachianLife, #SelfReliance, #GrowYourOwnFood, #OldWays, #ForestFarming, #OffGridLiving, #TraditionalSkills