Soaking logs....

On our way to the Home Bar in Troy MT yesterday we drove by a Idaho Forestry (?) lumber machining yard.....They had a few very large piles of full length logs that were being kept saturated with some high volume sprinklers....anybody know why? They were tossing tanker fulls of water based on the amount of gooey mud around the piles of logs...

I know that's how they grow shitakie. Mushrooms. seed the logs and keep them soaked
May be one answer.