Words from…Tom from Bellarine Fungi

Tom and Cameron are the dynamic duo behind Bellarine Fungi, a local mushroom growing business on the Bellarine Peninsula. They’ve taken their fascination with the world of mushrooms and turned it into a truly delicious and thriving adventure. We sat down to chat about their journey and why fungi can be so much fun!

How did your journey into mushroom growing/farming begin?

Cameron and I were both part of an urban farming cooperative in Norlane called The Farm Next Door. Our journey into mushroom farming began in November 2021 when our group was contacted on Facebook by a guy named Ernesto Sanchez, asking if we wanted some mushroom growing gear and worm farms. At the time it wasn't obvious that Ernesto was wanting to offload his entire commercial mushroom growing operation but when I got there it was clear this was an opportunity that couldn't be missed!

I'd left my previous job a few months earlier and wanted to start my own business. I had some experience growing mushrooms at home and this was an unbelievably good fit for me. Ernesto gave us his whole list of restaurants that he'd been working with, all his equipment and buckets for growing in, and we moved it into our friend Jenny's garage in Norlane. Cameron helped out voluntarily one day a week for a while and got increasingly hooked on the biology and process of mushroom growing. Pretty soon we were sharing the load equally and at the start of 2023 we decided to go into partnership and set up a bigger and better farm in Drysdale.


What sparked an interest in mushrooms specifically?

I met someone at a Norlane Summer Solstice festival who was helping people make little oyster mushroom growing kits to take home. Mine didn't work out but I was kind of fascinated by the process and started looking into all the different varieties you can grow and all their different requirements in terms of substrate and conditions. Mushrooms weren't really part of my world growing up because my Dad doesn't like them. So, they've always had a kind of special attraction to me; the kind of food I'd only get to eat if we were out at a restaurant and I got to order my own thing.

I'm not from a science background (although my Dad is a scientist) but the science of mushroom growing is really appealing. You have to think very carefully about contamination because molds are fungi just like whatever you're trying to grow, and you have to imagine you can see an invisible microscopic world of spores floating all around you, and mycelium and hyphae penetrating whatever substrates might be lying around. So there's a bit of laboratory work involved, as well as a more typical gardening side of things, and that's fun.


How did you nurture this passion for mushroom growing and what was the turning point that made you both think ‘we could turn this into a business’?

In the initial stages after I took on the mushroom farm from Ernesto I was working a casual job to keep the finances healthy but I knew the numbers looked good in the mushroom business as long as I could hit a certain volume. So the aim all along had been to be my own boss and start a thriving business. Ernesto was growing volumes that provided a really solid income so I knew it was just a matter of putting in the time and learning the skills necessary to consistently grow that volume.

The first two years have been really hard and we've suffered a lot of inconsistency. In the early days there were a lot of moments where I thought I'd 'cracked the code' only to have production collapse a week or two later. My casual job ended during one of those highs and the subsequent drop was pretty devastating. I think that's quite a common experience in lots of fields but especially so in farming. Once mushroom farming was my sole income it really supercharged the learning process! Eventually I reached a make-or-break moment because I couldn't keep living on the farm income which was less than a Centrelink allowance most weeks, and I was starting to run out of ideas for boosting production. I reached out to a mushroom grower in Melbourne for some advice and they took us on a tour of their operation where they were using two old refrigerated shipping containers. They had constant temps year-round and much better contamination control. Seeing that setup was a real boost and we decided it was what we wanted to go for as a partnership.

What are the varieties of mushrooms you grow and do they each require unique care and attention?

We grow almost entirely oyster mushrooms. There are a few strains we grow being pink, yellow, blue and tan, and each has slightly different requirements regarding temperature and humidity but are generally happy to grow in the same space, on the same substrate (barley straw) and at the same temperatures. We also have a bunch of oak logs that we inoculated with shiitake using wooden dowels. They're a bit over a year old and producing quite prolifically outside when the weather is right (lots of moisture and temps around 20C) but they're pretty vulnerable to bugs and aren't really saleable quality. We just give them away to friends or eat them ourselves.

We're currently fitting out a third shipping container and that will be able to substantially increase our oyster production while leaving some room for us to experiment with other varieties. Many of the restaurants we work with use enoki on a regular basis, which is a great strain for zero-waste growing. We'd also love to grow Lion's Mane and muck around with other medicinal and gourmet mushrooms.

Is there anything you’ve learnt about mushrooms that has radically changed the way you understand food systems and interact with food?

It's amazing to see how much plastic waste is produced in conventional mushroom production. We're very committed to zero-waste growing utilising 20L plastic buckets but it imposes a huge cost on the business in terms of time spent cleaning buckets and also contamination risk (because the buckets are pre-drilled with holes, so the substrate is exposed to air before the mycelium has colonised it). To be growing in single-use plastic bags, as is standard in the industry, we would lose less production to contamination and save a lot of time, but we'd be producing a huge amount of plastic waste per year.

Most industries have hidden costs that ultimately our environment pays for because waste management is inadequately levied and catered for in taxation and government policy. Mushroom growing has an aura of environmental sustainability because it often uses waste materials like straw, sawdust or coffee grounds. However, the plastic waste is a huge issue that would be costly to address and would affect pricing and availability of mushrooms. To build a more sustainable food system we need to have honest conversations as a society about the true costs of production.

Can you recall any unique or notable challenges/opportunities you’ve encountered working with mushrooms and running a small business in the small scale agricultural sector?

Mushrooms provide quite a unique opportunity in farming because the turnaround time is so fast we can ensure quite consistent sales (and income) year-round with a single variety of product. Conditions are so controlled in the shipping containers that we don't have to worry about the weather, just the continual operation of our equipment like the split systems, humidifiers and fans. A flipside of that opportunity, which is common in farming, is it's very hard to switch things off and take a break. Public holidays are meaningless to farmers and it's quite a tricky process to wind the whole thing down. We're fortunate to have each other to provide cover for breaks so it's not too hard, but it would be even better to farm as a collective of three or four (as long as the profits could stretch to it) so that you could divide up the year and have decent breaks for everyone.

How would you describe our current food system?

I think the most outlandish feature of our current food system is the widespread disconnection that exists on multiple levels. Most notably there is a disconnect between farmers and eaters; the supermarkets hold sway at both ends and there is limited communication along the supply chain. That's a very strange state of affairs if you look at the way things have been for most of human history. There's disconnection in lots of other areas: the disconnection that must arise for an abattoir worker to pull a 10-hour shift on a killing-floor; that we can get organic tinned tomatoes cheaper from Italy than Shepparton; that we can buy milk from Western Australia; that one farmer can manage a 10,000-acre cotton farm using a helicopter; that 10,000 acres can be dedicated to a single crop; that the received wisdom of soil management is to control three pure elements—nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium—with no regard for the soil microbiome... I could go on.

What do you envision a healthy and sustainable food system to look like?

I would like to see our food system bend towards a more ecological approach; understanding what we regard as ‘the food system’ as yet one system within a complex web of other interrelated systems. As farmers and caretakers of the land we need to understand that there are cascades of effects for every action we undertake, and that our perception of those effects is usually very limited and riddled with confirmation bias. The more we can draw connections, the better. Although I'm wary of the analysis paralysis that can come about when confronted with too much complexity. I think a more humble approach to the growing and sourcing of our food is necessary.

I think more connections between eaters and producers is always a good thing, and connections between farmers who are using the land for different things is also incredibly beneficial. Multi-storey farming is a very interesting avenue for landowners to explore. Who says that a cattle farm can only produce cattle, when it would take a minimal amount of space to also have a mushroom farm, some roaming chicken houses, and a market garden on the same land, all with interconnected flows of nutrients and produce. The difficulty is often communication between people and that's what supermarkets take out of the equation. It is easier and economically efficient to be socially disconnected, but if we make the effort to connect with each other and all the interlocking systems of planet Earth, we can build a more ecological food system.

What do you love most about the work you both do?

It's hard to pin it down to one thing. For me it has to be the social side of connecting with restaurants; hearing what the chefs are up to with our mushrooms and seeing our produce enjoyed and admired. They are such a fantastic product - both for cooking and human health - that they basically sell themselves, and I'm so in love with them that I can't help being a bit of a salesman.

Cameron loves the avenues for scientific experimentation, for the expansion of knowledge and experience in mushroom cultivation. We know so little about mushrooms, even those which are very widespread in cultivation. There are always new methods being developed for cultivation and it's such a frontier that you don't need to be a PhD student working at a university to be pushing the boundaries and trying new things.

Do you have a philosophy that you lean into when working with nature?

Observation is central to my philosophy. It's been a hard lesson to learn because I so often see what I want to see until reality kicks me in the butt and shows me how far off I was. I've had to notice when I'm seeing things exclusively in terms of the dollars or days or kilos and witness each bucket of inoculated straw as its own little biome within the larger biomes of our grow space, the farm we're on, the region, etc. If you can observe as carefully as possible, you've taken the first step towards actually doing something useful.

Taking some space from those constructed concepts of money, time, and mass has helped to free me from my expectations and actually interface with the living system that I'm trying to cultivate. Those constructs serve a purpose and they're helpful in certain arenas, but when you're trying to tune in to the health of a growing mass of mycelium and mushrooms, you need to leave your expectations at the door and just observe. On a related note, after two years of growing mushrooms for a living I've come to appreciate that most of my 'breakthroughs' have happened by mistake. Realising that has also been helpful in relaxing enough to thoroughly observe!

What are your visions for the future of Bellarine Fungi?

Well, the future of our little business is quite interesting right now! We started Bellarine Fungi together knowing that I'd be moving away from the region in early 2024. The plan is for Cameron to run the bulk of the operation solo, with myself offering whatever help I can, including business administration stuff and a day per week actually on site. Bellarine Fungi will be increasing capacity significantly in early 2024 (3 x once our new 12m container is up and running!) and we'll be exploring other mushroom varieties as capacity allows. With approximately 30kg - 40kg per week we'll be able to work with three or four restaurants at once, which will be really fun!

If you could give an aspiring backyard grower or budding farmer some nuggets of wisdom, what would you share?

Just start small, and don't let 'perfect' be the enemy of 'good'. It's great to have aspirations but in the end you've got to enjoy what you're doing and be process oriented rather than goal oriented (i.e. enjoy the journey). Try something ( e.g. like growing one bucket of mushrooms) and if it feels good, do more!

How do you most enjoy eating mushrooms?

I've heard of some great ones from some of the chefs we work with but my favourite comes from Sean at the Q Train.  

Blanch the mushroom in boiling water then pat dry, dip in beaten egg, then bread crumbs and shallow fry till golden brown. It's super simple but quite deluxe, especially with some garlic aioli or some kind of tasty dipping sauce, but even just salted.