Coming home to Mallory Springs
Progress on The Chanterelle Shack (our straw bale house) has slowed a bit, but we did manage to build a beautiful little timber frame barn for our milk cow Vaca last summer, using wood harvested from our place. Thanks to current TreeHouse resident & timber framer extraordinaire Cynthia Main, our dream of an easily accessible shelter for Vaca that could also hold a roll of hay became a reality...no more struggling to get that roll of hay up into the field, and no more worrying about how much hay gets wasted from getting rained on and/or stomped into the mud! And “The Cow Palace” even has a full loft for more storage of square bale hay and lumber. A big hats off to Cynthia, our dear friend Jacob Graber, and a whole crew of volunteers for helping us pull that one off!
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Before getting distracted by the new barn project, we also got a good start on yet another rocket mass heater – this time, for the solarium of our old log cabin. Once completed, it will provide a much more efficient way to keep that space heated as well as several cooking options! Similar to the “Rocket Range” in the outdoor kitchen ofthe Chanterelle Shack , it will have an oven, a metal cooktop and a heated cob bench.
We're pleased to report that our friend Andrew Ozinskas will be back again to lead a Wild Medicinals Retreat this spring! Andrew has been making a living wildcrafting herbs in the region since he was 16 years old, and he looks forward to spending another day with us, teaching how to identify, harvest and prepare a wide variety of medicinal herbs. We've received so much positive feedback about the events he's led here already that we just had to have him back! (We're also hoping to have Andrew lead a Wild Edibles Retreat sometime in the near future...probably Spring of '21.)And in other news: Despite this past Autumn's drought, we enjoyed record production from our shiitake logs once the rains returned...almost 400 pounds harvested over the last 3 months! (Mid-October thru mid-January.) The drought definitely put a serious damper on many of the fall wild mushrooms we enjoy foraging - especially the maitake - but we did score a record bloom of comb tooth (lion's mane's close cousin) and a gorgeous 46-pound chicken-of-the-woods...the 2nd biggest one we've ever found.
May 2020 see even more dreams come true!