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The bags of mushrooms are moved to the ‘flowering room’, a
second repurposed shipping container housing the high-tech
elements; the gadgets to maintain optimum growing conditions.
Simon explains, “Evaporative air-con, humidifiers, heaters, fans,
lights and vents are all used to try and keep the CO2 levels down,
humidity up and temps at the optimum growing conditions.”
In the flowering room the mushrooms are expected to double
in size daily and in the warmer months they are ready to harvest
after three days. The bags produce a second flush of mushrooms
around 10 days later. The warmer months bring on flourishes
of popular pink varieties, and in cooler weather white and pearl
varieties are more usual.
Noosa Earth continues to flourish as a business, with great
potential in the development of bi-products of the process.
Simon says, “We are left with a nutrient-rich bag of straw,
mushroom mycelium and coffee at the end of the process. We
are turning that into a beautiful compost, which will soon be
available to purchase from the farm. We are also setting up
garden beds (made from old pallets), which we can arrange the
bags in, top up with the compost and plant other crops in. We
have a bio gas set-up to start producing some energy from the
bi-product as well.”
Simon’s aim for Noosa Earth is to create a community hub,
which people can visit to buy freshly grown, spray-free produce,
learn new and innovative ways to access fresh, nutritious food
and discover ways to grow that food themselves. It’s a change of
lifestyle from his hospitality days, but a welcome one for Simon.
He may have swapped the late nights, long hours and weekend
work for being on call seven days a week, and 2am harvests,
plus “grey hairs, no surfing, a sore body, and no tips, but I still
spring out of bed each morning to get to the farm. The thrill of
expectation – seeing how the beautiful mushrooms, which really
are nature’s works of art, have grown – has not faded once!
“Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day again!”
noosaearth.com.au
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