Find your place at Spring Bird
The Shiitake Mushrooms are BLOOMING! Get your fresh shiitake mushrooms – cultivated on oak and maple logs. Pick up from Spring Bird at your convenience. Delivery options available within 20 miles of Spring Bird. We currently have 3 or 4 lbs blooming this week with …
Last Spring, we inoculated 100 logs with shiitake mushroom spawn! This Spring – like – in a few weeks- these logs will begin to fruit with fresh, log grown shiitake mushrooms! We will be selling both fresh shiitake mushrooms as well as the whole logs …
I’ve been working on some branding elements for selling our log grown shiitakes. What do you think about these color schemes? More on shiitakes coming soon. . . and hopefully a resurrection of the Spring Bird Newsletter!
Did you know that there are evergreens that lose their needles – and I don’t mean your dried out, spent Christmas tree – but living deciduous conifers? I wasn’t aware of these trees until living at Spring Bird, where there are both larch trees and …
A couple of days ago, Pat harvested this bunch of log grown shiitake mushrooms. They are our last mushroom harvest until Spring, and they tasted delicious sauteed in butter! In actuality, this Fall, we’ve had a couple of months of harvesting mushrooms from oak logs …
Wait a minute . . . is that a new fence at Spring Bird!? Why . . .YES! We* did recently finish the installation of the fence surrounding our once and future Food Forest Farm AKA our Multistory Agroforestry System AKA our Multifunctional Woody Polycultures. …
The Land Conservancy’s “Women’s Learning Circle” gathered at Wanda Farm (Harvard, IL) this past Friday! Joe took us for a hayride to visit their pasture-raised pigs, cows, and chickens. Beyond learning about rotational grazing, Joe spoke passionately about caring for animals in ways that not …
This afternoon, I had the pleasure of weeding and harvesting the neglected, upper meadow asparagus patch. For those of you who have never toed around in an asparagus patch, let me paint you a word picture before you look below for a more visceral vision. …
When the mushroom spawn arrived, our patio became an inoculation station. Fortunately, sunshine also made its glorious appearance – lighting and warming our tasks. We were working with shiitake spawn from various strains and logs from red oak, white oak, and sugar maple, which Pat …
This month, Patrick has been harvesting oak and maple logs for shiitake mushroom inoculation! For now, he is stacking them (about 100 logs) in the shade of these yew trees. At the end of the month, we will be drilling holes in them, stuffing the …
This letter was originally published in the 2022 Fall Issue of Woolgathering: Dearest Spring Bird, Let it be known that on this day and this day forward, I pledge allegiance to your land and to all who grow, inhabit, dwell, live, thrive and worship there, …
Yesterday, Pat and I mapped our final trees on our property as we prepare our agroforestry and conservation plans. This process of meeting and greeting each tree has been enlightening. (I will share more about that later.) One fairly basic way that it expanded our …
When propagating oak trees, the very best is to plant an acorn in the fall – directly in the ground and allow it to grow. Unfortunately, over winter, your planted acorn may be feasted on by rodents, and the acorns planted by birds and squirrels …
Walnut Dyeing! It’s been a couple years since I boiled walnuts for fun, but the green orbs were calling to me this year. About three weeks ago, I collected 15 lbs of fallen walnuts. This was easy to do because we have plenty of black …
Happy Labor Day! Today, I am grateful to all of the people who grow our food. Farming is intense and laborious work – especially if you are practicing regenerative farming techniques. Farmers farm because of their deep connections to soil, environment, plants, and animals. I’m …