our farm
We built our farm in a 40 foot shipping container - this allows us to occupy marginal space, be flexible and move if needed and own our means of production outright, reducing long term costs by avoiding rent.
Our Fruiting Chamber on the other hand is cool, damp and humid and has natural light cycle of 12 hours to mimic the autumnal forest conditions mushrooms love to grow in. To achieve these conditions we had to build an insulated ‘wet room’ which could withstand the high humidity created by our high capacity humidifier. All the climatic controls are automated through a combination of timers and sensors.
Our facility allows us to grow food all year. In a context of increasing climatic volatility and high reliance on imports of fresh foods, the significance of being able to produce healthy local food in the middle of a Scottish winter should not be underestimated.
The space we built is capable of producing ~20 kg of mushrooms a week. We primarily grow seasonal varieties of Oyster mushroom but are also experimenting with Lion’s Mane, Pioppino and Velvet Shank Mushrooms.
We’re incredibly grateful to our friends and community for all their help in building our farm and making this dream a reality.
A key aim of our project is to produce food in hyper-local and circular way, repurposing abundant urban waste to grow healthy food. Oyster mushrooms in particular are very versatile decomposers, able to ‘eat’ a huge variety of woody waste products. Thus far we have experimented with growing our mushrooms on sawdust from carpenters, cardboard, coffee chaff from coffee roasters, spent grain from brewers, spent coffee grounds from Cafes and and cacao husks from chocolatiers. As our project continues to grow this research and development will continue and we look forward to sharing our experiences and findings.
Our lab
Our lab is a key part of our mushroom growing operation. The lab is where we produce the spawn for mushroom cultivation. It’s akin to a plant nursery; it’s where we transfer and grow out mycelium in artificially safe and sterile environments until it’s reached a big healthy mass and can be used in the open.
As well as producing a variety of types of spawn for our farm, our workshops and our local community the lab is where we can isolate strains of fungi and move towards cultivating local fungi with genetics best suited to our local environment.
A lot of advanced mushroom cultivation techniques require or greatly benefit from relatively expensive lab equipment. That’s why we want our lab to be a shared community resource where we can share skills and local mycologists can come and carry out experiments, produce spawn and isolate cultures.
If you are interested in coming to use the facilities for your own mycological research please get in touch by email. We have fridges, flow hoods, pressure cookers and all the other basics you need!
We were incredibly lucky to have been supported by our local community in building the lab. In early 2021 we crowdfunded £8,600, most of which went to making our lab possible - thank you all again for your generous support!
