Gobardanga Mushroom Association

We are the Gobardanga Mushroom Association and our place is on the 1st Main Road in Mahalaxmi Puram. It’s a bit different from other businesses because we spend most of our time in dark, damp rooms. That is where the mushrooms grow best, after all. We have racks and bags filled with straw and spawn everywhere. It smells like earth and wet wood inside most of the time. We spend our mornings checking the temperature and making sure the humidity is just right. If it gets too dry, the crop is ruined. We harvest them by hand and then pack them into small plastic punnets. It’s a delicate process because they bruise so easily. People from around Mahalaxmi Puram come by to get fresh ones because they don't last very long on the shelf. We are just a small group of people working together on this. Sometimes we have too many mushrooms at once and we have to figure out where to send them before they go bad. Other times, the crop doesn't grow as fast as we expected. It is a lot of waiting and watching. We don't have any big machinery, just some basic fans and sprayers. It’s a quiet kind of work compared to the shops on the main road. We just focus on keeping the bags healthy and getting the mushrooms out to people. We try to keep the place as clean as we possibly can.