mushrooms Archives - Agricultural and Rural Convention

Letter From The Farm | Wandering In Quest Of Balance

September 15, 2023 Chiara Garini

We’re back on Chiara Garini’s farm at the foot of the Italian Alps, where the forest garden is in beautiful shape in its fifth mushroom season. Running the farm is a constant balancing act. It’s the satisfaction of producing food that keeps Chiara going. Don’t miss our policy explainer at the end of this letter, where we examine the policy constraints that prevent Chiara and other small-scale farmers from diversifying their activites. […]

Letter From The Farm | Cresting the Peaks of Constant Change

June 10, 2022 Chiara Garini

We’re back at the foot of the Italian Alps, where Chiara Garini is growing like the shiitake mushrooms on her forest farm. Given our precarious, hyperconnected and crisis-stricken planet, Chiara is sticking with the realism of making and maintaining –food and employment, forest and qualify of life– over the idealism of saving the world. The farm is growing too, and the long-awaited renovation of an old building is helping the now-expanded team to diversify activities. […]

Letter From The Farm | Three Years In: Realism And Planning For Utopia

March 5, 2021 Chiara Garini

We are back on Chiara Garini’s forest farm at the foot of the Italian Alps. Three years in, her mushroom farm and forest garden is at a crossroads: should she expand or diversify? In any case Chiara is determined to bring utopia into her business plan, and tells us about an exciting new development on the farm… […]

UK | Waking Up To The Power Of Mushrooms

February 25, 2021 Ursula Billington

Interest is mushrooming in the power of fungi to feed and heal people and the planet. On one urban farm in Bristol, England, mushrooms upcycled from wood chip are building topsoil as well as feeding the local eaters. Meanwhile another nearby mushroom growing initiative is giving wealthy landowners an incentive to preserve their woodland. Ursula Billington reports. […]

Letter From The Farm | Grateful For Invisible Friends

November 6, 2020 Chiara Garini

We’re back on Chiara’s forest farm at the foot of the Italian Alps, where there’s much to be grateful for. Chiara updates us on an abundant shiitake harvest, her mushroom business going wild, and finding solace in fungi as “invisible friends”. […]

Letter From The Farm | Thriving In The Ford

May 30, 2020 Chiara Garini

We’re back on Chiara’s mushroom farm at the foot of the Italian Alps, where forest farm life goes on regardless of the lockdown. She is determined to get her on-farm processing facility up and running for this season. During the Covid-19 crisis she’s been even more socially isolated than usual, giving her time to muse on the deeper meanings of the “ford”: the site of her farm, but also a metaphor for agroforesty and agroecology. […]

Letter From The Farm | Seeking Sustainable Shiitakes

December 10, 2018 Chiara Garini

With the cold season setting in, we are back on Chiara Garini’s agroecolgical farm in Italy to talk mushrooms and sustainable forest management. Introducing Gunter Pauli’s Blue Economy concept, Chiara discusses the pros and cons of shiitake cultivation and how she has approached it on the farm. […]

Letter From The Farm | What worked from the 1st growing season?

October 1, 2018 Chiara Garini

How was the first growing season for Chiara and her forest mushrooms? What worked and what didn’t work? And how sustainable – in ‘blue economy’ terms – is the whole thing anyway? […]