John Whittemore shares how to grow Shiitake mushrooms on a native white oak log. If done right, these logs will produce mushrooms for several years.

Nothing goes better with good friends and good drinks than good food. Saturday October 29 at 2 p.m. Short Mountain Distillery is offering our first workshop on cultivating your own Shiitake mushroom log. This workshop is in conjunction with Little Short Mountain Farm. Space is very limited and available by reservation and $30 by emailing John Whittemore at blueshillfarm46@yahoo.com or calling 615-216-0830.

John has been growing Shiitake mushrooms for market and personal use for seven years. Guests will use a drill to inoculate their own white oak log with Shiitake mycelium from Summertown, TN and learn how you can keep it producing several pounds of these beneficial mushrooms for years to come.

The organic corn for our first batch of whiskey and moonshine has started poking out of Short Mountain! Even better news: the goats didn’t find a way to it. John Whittemore says we’ll have to figure something out to deal with crows.

This Friday and Saturday (May 19-20), stop by our booth at Good Ole Days of Cannon County on the square in Woodbury. John will be there most of the time and will be offering a discount on our Spring Planting 2011 t-shirts celebrating our first planting. John’s talented family will be among those performing at this annual community event.

Tennessee Crossroads takes you to an annual tradition that honors our agricultural heritage.

Ever since the 1840s, Columbia, TN has played host to an annual gathering of mule breeders. Once called “Breeder’s Day,” the annual Mule Day Parade is now attended by over 200,000 people from around the world.

This year’s Mule Day is March 31 – April 3 in Columbia. There’s square dancing, crafts, a mule-driving contest as well as “working mule”, “best of breed”, and even lumberjack competitions. You might even see a few of the guys who will soon plow and disc our first organic corn crops.

Watch the video above from Tennessee Crossroads and learn about the role mules once played in shipping goods throughout our communities.

If you plan on attending this year, be sure to pick you up a copy of Dixie Longears. Short Mountain Distillery is a proud sponsor (see our center spread) of this inaugural magazine for mule enthusiasts across the country.

As you might have guessed, we like mules.