THE FABULOUS FOOD SOURCE
Afascination with fungi has seen Te Puke’s Sharn Steadman’s life take a whole new direction. Sharn started Manaaki Mushrooms in mid-2020.
“It was really just an accumulation of events — a few things lined up at the right time,” she says.
A former teacher, health issues led to Sharn moving away from the classroom and having more time on her hands.
“I spent quite a bit of time walking in the forest as my change of pace and discovered quite a few fungi growing. After some rain there was just an abundance of colours — reds and oranges and yellows — and I was a bit curious because I’ve long been interested in growing food at my house.”
One thing led to another. “I thought if I can grow vegetables, then maybe I can grow mushrooms and I was surprised that they were not as complex to grow as what I imagined.”
Sharn did some of her own experimenting, taught herself how to culture mushrooms and grow them on certain grains.
“That was good fun. It was something that I could do with not a lot of money. I could use recycled resources for a lot of things. I needed a pot with hot water, maybe some straw or cabbage tree leaves and some grain which had had the mushroom culture on it and I could grow quite a bit of food with that and they were delicious.”
Her first success came with native oyster mushrooms.
“They grew in abundance and I learned more about growing them on things like recycled cardboard and how they had been used around the world because they could grow on so many things.”
The more she looked into it, the more media she found she could use for growing.
She tried almost everything from empty pizza boxes to coffee grounds.
“Basically it was costing me nothing to grow delicious food.”
Hand in hand with learning how to grow mushrooms, Sharn learned what a good food source mushrooms were.
“I was amazed how nutritious they were — they are a powerhouse of a food — lots of proteins, lots of the good amino acids, some have a natural blood-thinning effect — people enjoy them for a range of purposes and that was very intriguing too.”
Around the same time as she was accumulating her knowledge, there was some local discussion about food security — what it looked like and how the Western Bay could move closer to food sovereignty.
Te Puke’s collaborative group COLAB was at the forefront of the discussions.
“I was thinking ‘why does nobody else know how to do this?’ So I went along to the earliest meetings around food security and said I’ve developed this knowledge because I had ended up, truth be told, experiencing this food security issue because I had stopped work due to my health. I went from teaching, on a good wage, to being supported by the various systems and that obviously meant a change to lifestyle.”
She also knew that, for people with a little time, mushrooms could be a low-cost food.
At one meeting she said she could support local people to learn and could share with them some of the low-input growing methods and teach people what mushrooms were safe and edible.
“They appreciated that might be an area of interest because there aren’t that many people growing mushrooms and making it in a way that is easy.”
That led to a series of workshops.
She got some wood from Nathan Lord of Lord of the Trees.
“That was the wood we used for our log workshops that we held to teach people how to grow mushrooms on logs. It was a beautiful collaboration with the community to use something that may have become firewood for a food source — logs can produce for between six months and three years.”
She also held workshops on how to grow mushrooms in straw and in icecream containers.
“Education has been important for Manaaki Mushrooms — not only for teaching people how to grow with what’s available locally, but getting them confident too.”
More people got interested in growing mushrooms, but foraging is another source — which is also a way of getting close to nature.
“So it started with food and then it went into wellbeing and then it went into connecting with your community which was important, especially after Covid (lockdowns).
“We got more people walking in the forest and the open air and that’s good for people’s spirits.”
So far Sharn has organised two hikoi to forage for mushrooms.
“On one we found five or six edible species within about a 500m stretch.”
She says foraging needs to be done in a respectful way, with permission, and not on DOC land.
“DOC land is for conservation and there are reasons you don’t pick from conservation land because it defeats the object of conservation, so those sorts of places like O¯ tanewainuku are fabulous, but for treasure hunting. They have bright purples, reds and oranges. They are not edible but they are beautiful to spot — they will catch your eye and catch children’s eyes as well.
“Through walks with people, not only have they got to experience that wonder which is a little bit childlike, they have developed some good connections through the workshops and people have started going on walks together so it’s good for their wellbeing too.”
She believes people have developed more respect for their place in the ecosystem and their contribution to the planet.
“It’s all fascinating and really diverse and for me, that’s why I ended up going ahead with the Manaaki Mushrooms concept of education, awareness, conservation and growing.
“It’s almost like a wraparound concept as opposed to just growing commercially because there’s so many elements that I would love people to know more about.”
She says there has been great community support and COLAB has been pivotal in facilitating the opportunities for the public, making them low-cost and easy to access.
“It will be interesting to see where it leads, but it’s up to the community I guess in some ways I have just been following them and their requests as I’ve been interacting with them.”