Margate Mushrooms

Hey Lovely Supporters, Can you believe it's been a whole year since our last update? Time flies when you're growing mushrooms! 🍄 Guess what? We've been busy – like, really busy. We've managed to sling over half a ton of fresh mushrooms into the Thanet area plus, we've also dried several hundred hundred kilos to whip up some fantastic products. The farm fam has grown too! We now have three paid positions, and we've just welcomed a fantastic new volunteer to the crew. Exciting news: Our mushroom farm has expanded! We converted another shipping container into a second fruiting room, giving us space to grow not just our beloved Oyster Mushrooms, but also Shiitake and Lions Mane! Psst... we're working on some health supplements, especially with the Lions Mane. Stay tuned for that! Oh, and did we mention that we're now supplying four out of seven Michelin Listed restaurants in Thanet? Fancy, right? You can also snag our goodies at Quex Barn, the Grain Grocer, and the Cliftonville Farmers Market. Speaking of goodies, check out our online shop (https://www.margatemushrooms.co.uk/order-online) for some fantastic Christmas gifts! We've got Grow-Your-Own bags in Pink and Grey Oyster Mushrooms, Dried Mushrooms, and the (weirdly delicious) sweet and savoury mushroom seasoning Gourmet Popcorn Kits! If you're still feeling the holiday spirit, why not grab a Gift Card for your mushroom-loving friends and family? They can pick their own fungi favorites! And guess what? If you want to see our mushroom magic in real life, catch us at these Christmas Markets: 13th December - Discovery Park, Sandwich – it's open to the public, so swing by between 11 AM and 2 PM if you're curious! 17th December – Cliftonville Farmers Market. We'll be holding down our usual spot from 10 AM to 1 PM. 15th - 22nd December – Christmas World at Dreamland. We'll be there from 11 AM to 6 PM daily. Let's make this Christmas extra special by supporting local! Jeff Bezos has enough, right? Sending you all our love and mushroom vibes, Darryn, Georgia, Becky, and Salman 🍄💚

Well! We are selling FAST! Today we had our first stall at the delightful Cliftonville Farmers Market, on their 21st birthday, and we sold out within an hour! We are so chuffed, but sorry to disappoint those who were a bit late. We will do our best to have more stock next month :) It was also wonderful to meet several of our backers today. That was a real treat to see the people who helped us so very much. Onwards and upwards - come and see us next month for fresh mushrooms and your very own grow bags!

Now that the shed is done, we're just waiting on the air-con which is going in on the 11th August and a bit of plumbing and we will be fully functional at last :) Anyone want to help us with the plumbing? It's not hard, and I'm sure we can work it out, but if anyone wants to volunteer to give us a hand.... We'd be super-appreciative! Please contact me on [email protected] if you can help. In the meantime we have started phase 2 in the background - this is the cottage industry home-working side of things. Recipes are being devised and shelf life of preserves being tested. We have been growing mushrooms but are not 100% happy with them yet - they're not in ideal conditions yet so are a little wonky. One of the MANY amazing thing about mushrooms is the learning cycle is only a few weeks, not a whole season as with most vegetables - so we have all been learning MUCH and enjoying watching them grow despite wonkiness. Love, Darryn, Tilly, Georgia and Phil.

Internal walls done, electrics going in and the between-container lean-to almost done too! Well done to Georgia, Til and Jack the electrician for getting us close to the end. We have been growing in my old home set-up, however, as we couldn't wait! Updates soon on those.

And so they start! What we're seeing here is called "pinning" - this is the start of a lovely big bunch of mushrooms!

So, we are THIS CLOSE to starting to grow! Georgia (on the right) has joined the team, and Matt (left) and Colin (not pictured) have been doing sterling work building our internal walls and laying floors and are now building the lean-to. I predict we will start incubating our first crop - TODAY! Woohoo! It's taken some time but we are finally there. We have a few more things to complete in the fruiting room, but we have about 14 days to get that done while the mushrooms are busy colonising the substrate in the incubation room. This is an experimental learning batch we will be starting today, but we are hoping it will be successful and we will have something to show for it in about 5 weeks time. And in this hot weather, we are seeing the benefit of having the very well insulated containers - it's such a steady temperature inside. Just what we need. :) Wish us luck!

I'd also like to introduce Tilly Abrams, our new Farm Manager - Tilly's the one in the red :) We have now got just about everything we need to get going- we took good advantage of the Dreamland and Debenhams auctions to fit ourselves out on the cheap with things like sinks (lordy was THAT a job to clean!) and work surfaces, and Daisy's (new cocktail bar in Margate, opening this weekend!) donated a fridge. So we are chomping at the bit!!!!! Happy weekends everyone! Best Darryn

It's been a bit slow, I fully realise, but anyone in Thanet can appreciate the extreme shortage (and thorough lack of reliability) of trades people! Our biggest hurdle has been finding a carpenter to build the stud walls we can go no further without. However, wood has now been delivered and people have been on site wielding Saws and Other Woodworking Tools. So there is real hope that this phase will be finished soonest and then we get to the finessing part. But we can actually start incubating our first batch in the Incubation room while we finish off the Fruiting room as we will have a good two to three weeks to get that done before we need to move things into the fruiting room. Onwards!