Fancy fungi business takes off for tradie still learning the secrets of edible mushrooms

Reece Villier and his family never expected to be running a successful mushroom-growing business when they moved to the southern forests of Western Australia for a tree change.

Along with his wife Erin, the qualified electrician walked away from taking over his parent’s contracting business in the Mid West in search of a quieter place to raise their children.

An interest in horticulture and access to an unused abattoir building in their new hometown of Pemberton, 325 kilometres south of Perth, encouraged the family to turn to mushrooms.

“We’ve only been going since July and started off doing about 2 kilos a week in a grow tent,” Mr Villier said.

“And then now we’re sending around 20 kilos of assorted mushrooms a week to restaurants and supermarkets, so it’s slowly building for us.”

Business builds

Mr Villier was introduced to the idea of growing mushrooms by a vegetarian friend who had established his own supply at home. 

“He gave us a grow bag one day with lion’s mane mushrooms and that opened my eyes to the whole mycelium world,” Mr Villier said.

“I wouldn’t say it was easy, but living down here was a way of getting into the industry with a relatively low financial input.” 

The farm where Mr Villier and his family live features a small abattoir building that was shut down in the early 2000s.

“We talked to the land owner and he was more than happy to let us in so we currently incubate in there, inoculate our blocks, and fruit them all.

“We’re starting to outgrow the space a little bit, which is good for us but means we will want to find somewhere else eventually.”

Trial and error

The mushroom journey has not all been smooth sailing. 

“I think every mushroom grower fails at the start, which we did,” Mr Villier said. 

“I’m a very impatient person, so I have rushed a few species that are supposed to incubate for a long period of time.

“At the start, trying to get our moisture content right, our bags and supplementation right, through to humidity and airflow was tricky to nail down — especially as we fruit all of our species in the one room.

“It was a lot of trial and error to begin with, but we think we’ve pretty much nailed it now.”

Mr Villier is still running an electrical contracting business while growing and selling mushroom varieties that include pink oysters, yellow oysters, lion’s mane, swordbelt, oyster, and pearl mushrooms.

He hand-delivers the produce to restaurants in places such as Margaret River.

He said one of the benefits of growing plenty of mushrooms was getting to eat them at home.

“We might take chicken out and throw some lion’s mane in for the kids,” he said.

“As they’re getting older they’re probably catching on a bit more, but we enjoy mushrooms and there are so many different ways to cook them.”