The shiitakes aren't the only mushrooms who have decided to start fruiting.  I plucked the Blue Dolphin oyster mushroom below off one of our totems, and figured that was a good excuse to go check out wild logs.  It turns out none of the wild oysters were fruiting, but I didn't mind since the wildflowers were in full bloom.

Now that our totems have been in place for a couple of years, I feel ready to pass judgement on the totems and/or the easy, gash inoculation method.  I suspect the latter is the reason the bark has flaked off these logs much faster than from our other box-elder mushroom logs, meaning that we're already nearing the end of the totem logs' fruiting life.

Since I started the spawn myself, I'm not out any cash, but I don't think I'd recommend the gash method of inoculation if you're trying to make storebought spawn give you your full money's worth.  Meals from these three logs might have amounted to two or three total, versus box-elder logs inoculated with Blue Dolphin spawn in February 2009 that were still churning out loads of mushrooms last fall.  With mushroom logs, the amount of food you get back does seem to be proportional to the amount of effort you put in.