We had a thread here last year about growing your own shiitake mushrooms, but it ended up getting archived.
No matter. New faces here by now, and maybe others have jumped in and plugged a few logs. Anybody?
For me, my stand of 20 or so logs is doing pretty well; no big flushes yet this spring, but enough are popping out here and there to keep me supplied as well as sell quite a few. I'm getting $18/lb for fresh, and have no problem selling as many as I can round up. I've got another 25 logs cut, sitting out in the yard now, and a new bag of plugs in the fridge just waiting for the weather to clear back up so I can get outside and drill and plug them.
I plan to keep adding around 25 logs/year, which I'm hoping will eventually level off at maybe 75-100 "working" logs, with the earliest being retired as the mushrooms use 'em up and replaced by the ones I add that year, FIFO-style.
Of all the critters and veggies and whatnot I've raised over the years (a lot), the shiitake logs are among my favorites. It's a pretty high-dollar crop, with very little hands-on after the initial preparation of the logs. Then it's just sit back and watch it happen. They're good (and good for you) too... we now use shiitakes instead of white button or portabellas is all recipes calling for such things. All in all there are few downsides... unless, of course, you hate mushrooms.
---
ETA: archived thread
here