Eastie Farm held a soft launch of its new mushroom farm Friday, Aug. 15 at its 6 Chelsea Terrace location. Rep. Adrian Madaro was a guest at Eastie Farm's Fungi Festivity, which was part of the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture's (MDAR) Urban Agricultural Week and intended to educate the community and generate excitement about mushrooms.
Madaro toured the facility and came away very impressed by the sheer innovativeness and agricultural brilliance of the Eastie Farm team whose new mushroom farm was constructed out of a shipping container. The farm – which produces culinary mushrooms – stands as part of a beautiful mural and a hydroponic lettuce farm and sits next to a geothermal greenhouse and some lovely garden beds – representing four different carbon neutral growing spaces on one site.
Micaelah Morrill, Project Manager, Joel Seidner, Living Lands Program Manager, and Lívia De Oliveira Costa, Administrative Assistant, were among the Eastie Farm leaders providing tours and educating visitors about culinary mushrooms.
Eastie Farm Executive Director and Co-Founder Kannan Thiruvengadam, who is regarded as a true visionary in his field, said the process of building a new mushroom farm in East Boston originated "from the state [of Massachusetts] making some grant money (the biggest funders of the mushroom farm are MDAR and Klarman Family Foundation) available and we [at Eastie Farm] also finding other ways to create more infrastructure that would increase the food security of this community and the larger Boston area as a whole."
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