Newsletter #43

The movers and shakers on our planet, aren't the billionaires and generals, they are the incredible numbers of people around the world filled with love for neighbor

and for the earth who are resisting, remaking, restoring, renewing and revitalizing.

~Bill McKibben

Hello Friends!

Welcome to issue 43 of my newsletter and welcome to all new subscribers and a big thank you to all paid subscribers. I just came from a talk called Climate Change: The Activists Among Us! Once again, I was reminded that where each of us can make a real difference is in our own community. Local action is more powerful than most people realize. While you won’t save the world on your own, you might be part of the solution.

In this issue, you will learn why Shiitake Mushrooms are good for your health; Notes from my Garden Journal about River’s Edge Farm; what is the Department of Seaweed; why Yasmeen Lari just won the RIBA Ryal Gold Medal and a short film about Japanese Shiitake Forestry. Onwards!

#1- Shiitake Mushrooms

I love Shiitake mushrooms. Orginally native to the mountain regions of Japan, Korea, and China, where it grows on fallen logs, it has a long history of use all throughout East Asia, with people collecting wild shiitake for both food and traditional medicine. People in China first began cultivating shiitake mushrooms about 1,000 to 1,200 years ago, where they knew the species as dongo or shanku.

Homegrown shiitake mushroom. This was a big one!

Cultivation methods later spread to Japan, with samurai warriors controlling most of the production for the aristocracy. Here, shiitake gained the name that remains widely accepted today — shii for Castanopsis cuspidata, the hardwood tree species that the mushrooms commonly grow on, and take, the Japanese word for mushroom.

Eating shiitake mushrooms benefits your health from strengthening your bones, to supporting skin health, and reducing inflammation. Since shiitake mushrooms has one of the highest amounts of natural copper, this mineral in turn supports healthy blood vessels, bones, immune support and circulation.

Shiitake mushrooms contain eritadenine, a compound known to reduce cholesterol levels in the blood. They also contain beta-glucans that reduce inflammation and help prevent the intestines from absorbing cholesterol. 

In addition, shiitake mushrooms are a good source of these key vitamins and minerals: Vitamin D, copper, selenium, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, Vitamin B6, folate, potassium, manganese, magnesium, iron and phosphorus.

You can grow your own shiitake mushrooms, which I have been doing these past few years at River’s Edge Farm. This year’s crop is just starting to fruit and this morning I counted 16 tiny shiitakes emerging from the logs! I find that if I water the logs regularly, this encourages the logs to fruit. The same log should produce fruit for at least 2 years, sometime 3.

A favorite recipe and one that make often, includes shiitakes and is from my book LOLA Lots of Love Always.

Source: Webmd and Organicfacts

LOLA available here: https://www.priscilla-woolworth-store-studio.com/shop/lola-lots-of-love-always

#2- Dairy from River’s Edge Farm

-Notes from my garden journal October 1st-15th-

For those of you learning about River’s Edge Farm for the first time, it is a carbon neutral, zero waste, organic mini-farm where I grow a lot of my own food and medicine, as well as planted a pollinator garden and a stone fruit orchard, built an insect house, and manage several composting stations. It’s located in the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York.

I have a wildlife camera set up near the two compost stations, which has captured many possum sightings of Phoebe, the possum I fostered last year and released nearby. As possums are nocturnal foragers, I’m thrilled to see her coming and going from wherever her secret home is. Hoping to one day see her with a babies clutching onto her back!

Lots of woodchuck activity, eating nonstop, getting fattened up and ready to hibernate for the winter.
A few stray butterflies and a last hummingbird before it heads south for the winter. Since I don’t have the bird-feeders out at the moment, as there are plenty of native foods available from seeds to insects, I’m not seeing many birds close-up, though I am seeing lots of activity flitting through the trees.
Mantids are appearing in the south meadow, crawling through the goldenrod, where I just spotted the first egg case.
Many nuts have been picked and saved, however, only the hazelnuts are easy to crack. The shagbark hickory nuts are possible, and the butternut and walnut are really hard. I’ve given them back to the animals, spreading them on top of of the stone wall and in nooks and crannies of the garden. They’ll find them.

Only a few flowers still blooming: hydrangeas, cosmos, climbing roses, zinnias, Mexican sunflower, calendula, nasturtium, cutleaf coneflowere and asters in the meadow.
I found mustard growing behind the compost area where I threw some extra seeds and I picked and it was delicious in a salad.
The first year’s asparagus baby fronds are still standing up in a row and will hopefully survive the upcoming winter.

I dug up several sprouting avocado plants from the compost and have potted them, and brought them indoors. Let’s see if they survive the winter in the house, before being put outdoors next spring. Same for the rosemary, which I planted in pots and brought indoors as well. Papaya seeds sprouted into small trees in the compost as well! They will die down after the first freeze.

Still saving these seeds: borage, zinnia, beans, Joe pye weed, ironweed, nasturtium, scarlet runner bean, sweet pea, calendula and cosmos.

Brought in the last of the medicinals to make tea: lemon verbena, lemon balm, mint, and mullein, as well as sage, and thyme for cooking with.

I could have one more post for the next newsletter, before River’s Edge Farm has fully gone to bed for the winter.

#3- Department of Seaweed

Founded by designer and researcher Julia Lohmann, The Department of Seaweed is a transdisciplinary group who look at the future of seaweed as a sustainable resource. The network includes experts from science, design, art, crafts, philosophy, policy and justice. Julia Lohmann investigates, critiques and explores the marine organisms’ potential as a design material by developing a way to use seaweed in novel ways, such as her giant kelp structures.

Stunning studio!

Seaweed is incredibly fast growing and can grow to large sizes. This plant-like organism is not only good for you to eat. It also holds amazing qualities for your skin, as well as being the perfect biomaterial. This is mainly due to the fact that it can be manipulated in many different ways, while also not causing damage to the environment when disposed of correctly.

Julia, like many others, wants to reiterate that using seaweed as a new material isn’t a quick fix. When in the ocean they can be beneficial to the ecosystem, and farming could hugely disrupt this, and cause pollution. But if we do this sympathetically, and grow seaweed sustainability, it can actually benefit the environment by pulling harmful excess nutrients from the water and act as a carbon sink, absorbing carbon dioxide from the air.

Watch Julia Lohmann talk about her work:

#4- Yasmeen Lari

-an inspiring woman-

Have you heard of the innovative and socially conscious architect from Pakistan, Yasmeen Lari? After retiring from her architectural practice in 2000, Lari shifted her focus to humanitarian efforts, helping the victims of natural disasters, such as the 2005 earthquake and subsequent floods. Lari has also developed a system of distributing knowledge across rural communities and empowering them to self-build and rediscover indigenous materials and techniques. This system has proven to be an effective and self-sustaining alternative to top-down models of charity, creating a rights-based model of the poor helping the poor, and moving toward achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, with an emphasis on goal number one: No Poverty.

 For her significant contributions to the field of architecture, sustainability, and activism, Yasmeen Lari was awarded the RIBA Ryal Gold Medal in 2023. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced that Professor Yasmeen Lari, Pakistan’s first female architect, will receive the 2023 Royal Gold Medal for architecture. The award, one of the highest honors for architecture and the first to be personally approved by King Charles III, recognizes Yasmeen Lari’s work in championing zero-carbon self-build concepts for displaced populations.

Lari’s work in championing zero carbon and zero waste construction is exemplary. She is doing affordable projects that address the real and often urgent need for accommodation, and basic services, but with generosity and an eye for the potential of everyday materials and crafts to make architecture at all scales. Her way of working also sets out to address the physical and psychological damage caused by major natural disasters – disasters that sadly inevitably will be ever more prevalent in our densely populated and climate-challenged planet.

Source: thearchdaily.com

#5- Movie: Japanese Shiitake Forestry: Episode 23

Filmmakers Anna Palmer and Costa Boutsikaris created the Woodlander series, an online film series that seeks to document the work of people who care for and depend on forests for their livelihood and well-being throughout the world. Even among today’s progressive movements of local economy and food systems, the vast global knowledge of forest livelihoods and economies are mostly undervalued and undocumented. From woodcraft and nut tree cultures of ancient Europe, to mushroom and forest medicines of Asia, there are many fascinating ways of creating sustainable economies from the forests while maintaining their ecological health and complexity.

This episode is 12.31 minutes long and features shiitake mushroom farmers and foresters in Kunisaki, Kyushu, Japan.

Watch it here

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All the best,

Priscilla