Shiitake mushroom logs

We're on our second attempt at growing our own shiitake mushrooms on logs.  We got aged oak logs from a nearby farm, drilled about 40 holes per log and filled them with the shiitake mushroom plugs we had bought from the "Fun Guy" near Stouffville.  There are a few important elements about growing edible mushrooms on logs - the logs must be about 2 years old (not too freshly cut, but not aged so long so they are dried out); the logs should preferably be hardwood; the logs need to have the bark intact (to protect the spores from possible contamination caused by too much water seeping into the log); the logs need to be moistened after filling with the spore plugs (not misted too lightly, and also not soaked too long - a little tricky to figure out exactly); and they need to be stored in full shade set upright propped against a fence.  After all that, it should be fairly easy to grown mushrooms - well, we'll see.  On our last batch we had one pretty successful crop of mushrooms but then the logs seemed to dry up, and we later learned the logs may have been too old.  We were told we should get several crops of mushrooms from this set.  Another foray into producing our own food on 1/3 acre here in the city...