Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
THE LOCKDOWN IDEA THAT JUST ..MUSHROOMED
Couple found inspiration in the garden
LIKE most of us, Terence and Judit Vaz got up and went to work every day, cared for their kids and relished the handful of holidays they took each year.
But when the pandemic hit, furlough followed and the East Belfast couple found themselves staring at the same four walls, with little to challenge them.
In a bid to fill his largely empty days, Terence started helping out at a friend’s garden tending fruit and vegetables – and that’s when inspiration struck.
The former luxury cruise agent and dental assistant Judit, whose second maternity leave kicked in as coronavirus took hold, started growing their own food at home and soon found a niche in the Northern Ireland market for gourmet oyster mushrooms.
Now the 35-year-olds split their days between tending to their two little ones as well as five varieties of mushrooms – with plans to grow from there.
The Daily Mirror popped down to Hearty Growers HQ at East Belfast’s Portview Trade Centre to hear how spores and fungi have taken root in their lives.
Terry told us: “Back in March I was furloughed as a cruise travel agent. It was quite rough for me from my mental standpoint to be furloughed all of a sudden.
“In a funny way it did help because nine months of furlough did something to us physiologically, we were ready for the next move not knowing what it was.
“It just gave us the confidence to do something and create something - so we were in that flow of gardening and fixing things so when mushrooms happened, we did the education and then starting practicing it.
“That was a changing moment for us.
The dad of two’s interest first took seed volunteering at a friend’s “organic market garden in Helen’s Bay”. He said: “That became an
We started growing in our back yard – 40 varieties TERENCE VAZ EAST BELFAST
GARDEN PARTY Some of the five varieties they grow avenue for me to just go and be out with nature and at the same time help him.
“I started learning loads of things through the farm, from setting beds to composting to seeding, maintaining, then harvesting and boxing them and eventually farmer markets once a week.
“We got a well rounded picture of what organic markets were all about, how the local community comes together to support the local farmer.
“It introduced us to a world that was not on our radar at all.
“We love to cook, there’s Hungarian, Middle Eastern and Indian cuisine that we share between ourselves – we enjoy fusing food together but when we realised we can grow these crops and cook
them. It just took us to another level.
“We started growing in our back yard – 40 different varieties of veggies and herbs and we saw that it’s all possible without in-depth education.
“Through that we stumbled on a few videos online to grow your own mushrooms, so I sourced a couple of things like spores and substrate online – brought it home, followed the advice of these videos and a month later we actually had produce.”
Because restrictions had slightly lifted in summer, Terry said they got to treat friends to what they had grown at barbecues.
He added: “We harvested a few mushrooms, Judit sauted them with the rest of the food, they bit into them and said, ‘What meat is this?’
“That expression on their face when they had bitten the mushroom, that’s when the penny dropped and we realised we could do this for a living.”
ONE TO GROW ON Terence and Judit Vaz from East Belfast
During a holiday, the couple decided to give it real a go together and invested in everything they needed to start, including a business course with Belfast City Council.
Following a couple of month’s practice when friends and family were gifted kilos of mushrooms, they then secured start-up funding from East Belfast Enterprise and Belfast City Council, after which they were able to move the growing kit out of their home and into a business park mid January.
Judit said: “It was an interesting journey. I remember when Terry was furloughed and we had that month where we didn’t know what was going on and how long it would happen.
“He lost his job later on and felt really down, and as he said, decided to work at the garden and his face was shining. That was beautiful.
“When he had the idea of turning our garden into a vegetable garden – I freaked out because having two babies under two at home and then trying to manage that, without having other people to contribute.
“But it happened anyway and I just fell in love with the whole process. “Then he brought the mushrooms.” Laughing, the trained dental nurse, added: “My very first reaction was ‘yay, you go ahead I have enough to do’.
“But I remember the barbecue when we harvested it and I cooked it and served it and seeing our friends’ faces. That was really the moment when we thought this could be it. I got on board 100% and I love it. The kids love it. Our daughter is three and ever since we started growing mushrooms she just sees mushrooms everywhere.” ■ You can follow @Heartygrowers on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook or at www.heartygrowers.com.
THE wife of North Korean despot Kim Jong-un has been seen in public for the first time in more than a year after vanishing mysteriously.
Ri Sol-ju joined her husband at a concert on Tuesday. She hadn’t been seen since last January when the Covid-19 epidemic was gripping neighbouring China.
It was suspected the 31-year-old ex-singer may have been pregnant, suffered a health scare or was kept out of sight for more sinister reasons.
The couple smiled at Mansudae Art Theatre in capital Pyongyang at an event to mark the birthday of his late father, the former leader Kim Jong-il.
Pictures of Kim Jong-un, 37, and his wife appeared in the secretive state’s
Worker’s Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun yesterday. Local media said the pair were welcomed with “thunderous cheers”. Last year Kim also disappeared for weeks, amid speculation he had been struck down with a mystery illness or was in hiding from coronavirus.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service this week said Ri may have been out of sight as she was avoiding Covid-19 and caring for her children.
The couple are thought to have three children and while Pyongyang has said the country does not have the virus, it is believed there may be an epidemic.
They married in 2009 in a ceremony hurriedly arranged by Kim’s father who had suffered a stroke a year earlier.
Unlike recent events involving Kim, nobody in the photos wore masks or social distanced. The paper also said he visited the palace housing the bodies of his father and grandfather and laid wreaths to celebrate the Day of the Shining Star.
State media also once again referred to Mr Kim as “President” – instead of his usual title “Chairman”. The title of president is usually reserved for the state’s late founder Kim Il-sung.