Mushroom Farming in the Woods

(I welcome your comments or questions, signed or anonymous, in the comment field below each blog entry.  If you would like to receive an email notification when a new item is posted, you can enter your email address where indicated on the lower right side. Alternatively, click the below image to leave me a voice message. -- Laura)
      The weather patterns of the Lower 48 and Alaska have been inverted all year.  Last winter was absolutely balmy in places like Chicago and New York, while Alaska experienced record breaking snow.  This summer is sweltering in the Continental US, but tepid here.  In fact, the first half of July has seen the coldest average in Anchorage’s recorded history (the closest major city to us): +52 degrees.

Needless to say, gardening has been disappointing in yield, size, and speed.  On yet another cool, overcast day, I thought, “Perfect mushroom weather!”  It is cool and damp and we live amidst shady woods full of an Alice in Wonderland array of mushrooms and other fungi.  However, because I don’t feel competent to forage for edible mushrooms in the woods, (and dare I say it – I don’t actually like them) I bought mushroom plugs to plant now and harvest next year for my husband.    Today was the day to start.

The entire vocabulary for mushroom farming is different from other gardening and frankly, somewhere between gross and disturbing.  Instead of buying seeds, one buys “plug spawn.” Rather than plant them, one “inoculates” a log or stump.  Instead of growing, one “incubates.”  The longer one waits to “force fruit”, the higher the “colonization.”  Doesn’t this sound like something in a Bio-Hazard laboratory?  Didn’t I see this in The Andromeda Strain? Still, boredom and yet another incipient rainfall can be a marvelous incentive to play outside with “plug spawn” so we gathered together the tools of the mushroom farmer and sauntered off to the birch tree base in the woods now bereft of the trunk that Bryan had dispatched earlier in the week.

Tote Water, Chop Wood

Buddha’s followers once asked him, “Master, what should we do before we attain enlightenment?”

He answered, “Tote water, chop wood.” 

“What should we do after we attain enlightenment?”

He responded, “Tote water, chop wood.”

I certainly haven’t reached enlightenment, but I am working on the other two. 

Every few days I lug 8 gallon jugs I have filled with lake water up the hill to locations near gardens, the chickens, and the burn barrel. 

Today, I started to chop wood.  I had postponed this endeavor because I was leery of my uncoordinated potential, swinging a heavy, sharp axe through the air and back toward body parts I value.  So I decided to start with something a bit less intimidating:  using a hand axe (about the size of a long hammer, but with a much heavier head) to split logs into kindling. 

How Much Do You Know About Salmon? (Fisherpeople, Cooks, and Restaurant-goers)

Below are 11 questions about salmon, some for people who fish and others for people who eat.  Which facts did you know or not know? 

1.     Match the common name of a salmon species on the left with its alternative name(s) on the right (Some have more than one match).

1.     Pink	a.    Chinook
2.     Red	b.     Coho
3.     Silver	c.     Dog
4.     King	d.     Humpies or Humpbacks
5.     Chum	e.    Sockeyes
	f.     Steelhead
	g.    Blackmouth
	h.    Spring salmon
	i.      Tyee

  

2.         Which of the choices above right (letters) is a trick option because it is not really a salmon but a trout, despite its sales name, Atlantic salmon?

3.         Which species can potentially live the longest?  Which has the shortest lifespan?

4.         Which two species are the most common?

5.         Which two have the highest oil content (omega 3s), and are therefore best suited to grilling, smoking, and freezing?

6.         Which have the lowest oil content and therefore may lose texture when frozen and may dry out when cooked the wrong way?

7.    Which ones have the darkest, red-orange meat (while the others can be beige-pink)?

8.    Although the species run (migrate upstream) at different times in different parts of Alaska (and elsewhere), which of the numbered options tends to run the earliest?  The latest?

9.    Which species is exported in vast quantities to Japan and may be the one you eat at a sushi bar?

10.  Which species develops the startling green head and red body when spawning in fresh water?

11.  Which species is distinctive by its vertical stripes and deeply cut tail fin?

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How did you do?  For the answers and more information, enjoy the next blog entry, "Salmon Facts for Tourists, Cooks, and Restaurant-goers."

Visitors among Other Invasive Creatures

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Everyone who has a second home on a lake or beach or other attractive setting has stories about their visitors.  Below are some of mine. 

Like any parent who is sure that his baby is the most beautiful in the world, Bryan’s love affair with the state of Alaska and his property adventure had prompted him to invite everyone on the planet to visit us over the next few summers.   Initially, I looked forward to these visitors as a break from outdoor labor.  On the other hand, the experiences of our first few visitors soon engendered in me an intense reaction approaching xenophobia.  I came to fear an onslaught of naïve visitors, larded up with the same multi-faceted ignorance that we demonstrated so amply on any given day.  Given Bryan’s superlatives, what if they expected a vacation resort rather than what was really a remote homestead?  What if they regarded words like “rustic” as something that still included indoor plumbing and a gravel road to a doctor or shopping mall?  On the other hand, what if they thought they knew their way around guns and fishing hooks and fire ... because they were of a particular gender that assumes muscle memory from being a cub scouts several decades earlier or watching Discovery Channel once upon a time.


With each ensuing visitor, I adapted a planning, and packing guide – whether to encourage or discourage visitors is open to interpretation.  I also limited the number of guests to one set per month and, except for relatives, to 3 days,  after one particularly social summer when I cooked 156 person/meals (yes - I counted) for business friends of my husband (and their families) - people I had never met before and rarely seen since.  

Below are some of the "best - worst guest anecdotes." 

 (Dear Friends:  you know who you are).

Useful Salmon Facts for Fisherpeople, Cooks, and Restaurant-goers

(Laura welcomes your comments, signed or anonymous, in the comment field below any entry)

If you find yourself confused by the variety of names associated with salmon, you are not alone.  Some terms are used interchangeably to describe the same fish.  For example, Chinook, King, and Blackmouth all refer to the same species.  Others are identified by their location, like Copper River Salmon, without reference to the species at all!  Still others are referred to as salmon but actually aren’t.  Atlantic “salmon” sold as Steelhead, is actually a trout, and Danube salmon is something else entirely.  

Because salmon formed the basis of subsistence and commercial livelihoods for centuries of people with different languages in disconnected locations, and because it is important to the mythology and agriculture of those regions as well, it is not surprising that a traveler (or restaurant-goer) may encounter such a variety of terms.  Certainly, almost every region of Alaska is well associated with this wonderful fish. I think it is smart of Alaska Airlines to paint its newest planes with a salmon, instead of the scary looking Eskimo guy.

In Alaska, some salmon is reserved for dog food (but frankly, for most of us non-connoisseurs, unused to five types of salmon, it tastes fine), while other species are considered best suited to the grill or to freezing or smoking.  Next time you see an undesignated salmon in the seafood section of your supermarket, or consider your fishing limit for harvesting vs. “catch and release,” ask about the species!  It may help you make decisions.