What’s Growing: Mushrooms, Bees, Garlic, and What’s Next for OffGriddy

An update from the property — what’s in the ground, what’s coming this spring, and why we built something we think you’re going to love.

[Image: garlic beds / garden spring 2026]

The vegetable garden is in much better shape than last year — organized, properly zoned, tomatoes contained to their own territory where they cannot oppress their neighbours. The lessons from 2025’s chaotic first season are visible in the layout. There’s a quiet satisfaction in a well-structured bed in May that I did not anticipate when I started this.

Three mushroom experiments are underway: red caps, black oysters, and a shiitake log tower that I’m cautiously optimistic about — emphasis on cautiously. Mushrooms, I’m learning, will either reward your patience completely or ignore you entirely. I’ll report back.

And the bees are coming.

I’ll be getting a Flow Hive this spring, which, if you’re not familiar, is a genuinely clever piece of engineering — a hive designed so you can harvest honey without disturbing the colony. I’ve wanted bees since before we moved here. That this is finally happening feels like a milestone. Shep’s opinion on this development is, as yet, unregistered.

Now — something I’ve been quiet about, and shouldn’t be any longer.

While the property has been growing, I’ve been building. The barn that became a studio became, over the past couple of years, something more: a full business operating system I call Studio-J. I built it for myself, to run things the way I wanted to run them — self-hosted, no monthly SaaS fees, owning the data entirely. Very on-brand, as it turns out.

And now I’ve used it to build something for you.

The OffGriddy membership now comes with access to a suite of AI-powered planning tools designed specifically for off-grid and sustainable living. We’re talking tools I genuinely wish I’d had when we started:

Garden Reimaginer — upload a photo of your space, get an AI landscape plan back. Seed Planting Calendar — personalized to your zone, month by month, with the exact timing for your climate. (I ran mine for Zone 4b Northumberland and it scheduled my garlic mulching for late October. It was right.) Food Forest Designer — a permaculture blueprint built from your actual land. Off-Grid System Calculator — size your solar and battery setup properly before you spend a dollar. Terrain Mapper — 3D LiDAR scan viewer for understanding your land. And more in development.

These aren’t generic tools. The reports they produce are specific, detailed, and genuinely useful — the kind of thing that used to require hiring a consultant.

All of it is included in an OffGriddy membership for $1.99 a month.

I’m not sure that price needs more commentary than that.

A lot has happened since I last wrote regularly here. The land is producing. The forest is healing. The music is being made. The tools are built and working.

It’s good to be back.