In a large warehouse, not far from TaupÅ, a young couple is busy bagging gourmet mushrooms. Their established vegetable garden and loyal Jack Russell terrier make it difficult to imagine the pair once lived a city life in Auckland. Benson Thomas and Hattie MacLennan took the plunge into a new food production venture in January 2023 using the Thomas family's earthworks company to clear their farm paddocks. They transformed four hectares into land suitable for mushroom growing and the result is Forage Mushroom Co.
They produce several varieties of oyster mushrooms - Italian, Phoenix (which are native to New Zealand) and Pink - selling them at farmers' markets, to online customers and to local restaurants. Forage was born during the pandemic when the pair began brainstorming a new way to make a living. Thomas had a background in agricultural and applied science and was interested in horticulture and in 2020 he unearthed an obsession with mycology, the study of fungi.
MacLennan, meanwhile, was working in HR and realized she could work remotely when they made the switch to rural living. She calls Wednesday her "forage day", harvesting and bagging the mushrooms for customers across the region.
Forage's HQ is a 600 square metre warehouse brimming with shipping containers and climate-controlled, purpose-built equipment and mushroom grow kits which the pair sell online to those who want to grow their own in just six days.
Read the entire article at NZ Herald