Friday, July 3, 2020

Now Accepting SolTree Shiitake Shroom Orders! Surprise Harvest! $25 per 1/4 oz (sun dried)


So I just got my largest harvest yet - totally unexpected. I figure it was way too hot and too dry for a harvest. But I forgot that the new "shade cloth" would also hold in the moisture from the previous 4 hour log soaks that I did - some I soaked for six hours. WoW - amazingly it did the trick!

So people can just double click to enlarge the photos.
It's just a nice natural harvest.
So I repeated my previous plan - to preserve the nutrition and medicinal value (wild crafted forest shrooms have TWICE the Lentinan - over twice - as indoor sawdust grown shiitake - most of the grocery store shrooms).

So I carried the cooler into the forest and then the generator and plugged in the cooler to get it down to temp. Even though this is northern Minnesota - it was still in the mid-80s. Of course the forest shade cooled things down a bit.

So it's not an overwhelming harvest - but again this one took me totally by surprise - you're supposed to get harvests in the spring and fall - it's definitely NOT spring nor fall.

And even the harder and later inoculated (and smaller) Alder logs - have more of a harvest than before.
So birch is softer and I inoculated it first - so it has produced the most so far. But it looks like the Alder will actually produce shrooms - I was afraid the logs would dry out too much. It appears this burlap "shade cloth" is really the PERFECT addition to the EcoEcho Forest Cultivation mini-forest.

The lower bottom smiley face was part of a "charm" that a relative made for me - to protect the shrooms.

So this is post-harvest - the shrooms are in the cooler powered by the generator. The logs are covered back up in the shade cloth. I still need to soak the logs again - but now I have the shrooms drying to double or even quadruple the Umami Flavor - gotta break down that RNA....and convert the amino acids....

The generator started at 100% - so I blogged on the cooler before. It must draw 3 to 4 amps.

Green light means it is cooling! Even though the "road" temp was over 90 Fahrenheit - and I do not have AC in the car - as the sun went down then the road temp got down to lower 80s. The cooler got down to lower 60s - so it definitely HELPED to preserve the nutrition - for the three to four hour drive.

I showed off my Shiitake Harvest - opened the cooler - for a small town fake Chinese chain restaurant. I had tried to talk to the owners before but they did not speak hardly any English. The son was cooking and of course he is Americanized. So he was smoking in the back and outside - I opened up the cooler and he looked at it and immediately shook his head. I just wanted to show off my harvest and give him a chance to prove he didn't know about traditional chinese food from 1000 years ago - log grown Forest Shiitake shrooms! haha.

But maybe the martial arts school across the street was a bit better?
Just email me at EcoEchoCultivation @ g ma il - if you want an order.

If it is international then I will ground the shroom into powder.

I still did not CUT the caps - I'll just do several hours at 158 - F - considered the best for Umami flavor. I already had several days of the shrooms drying in the "sun" - albeit under shade cloth - but they still got some sun for sure.

So the shrooms will need to be soaked over night before cooking - and best cooked in water to bring out the flavor and soften up the shrooms even more.

I should get more than a half pound dried - so maybe even 3/4 of a pound dried.

So I'll try to accept three orders. thanks.












No comments:

Post a Comment