Srii Guru Mushroom

Srii Guru Mushroom is based out in Bygamath, which is up in the Ooty area. Growing mushrooms is a very different kind of farming compared to what people usually think of. It is all about the climate here. The cool Ooty air is actually quite good for what we do. We spend our days in the dark, damp sheds where the mushrooms grow in bags. It involves a lot of waiting and watching the temperature. If it gets too dry or too warm, the whole batch can go bad pretty fast. We use compost and keep things as clean as we can, which is a lot of manual labor. Our hands are usually dirty from handling the substrate. We don't have a big shopfront. Most of our work is done in the back, checking the pinheads and harvesting them when they are just the right size. It’s quiet work for the most part, not like a busy city market. You can hear the wind in the trees outside while we are working inside. Sometimes the road to Bygamath gets difficult during the rainy season, which makes it hard to send the mushrooms out to the shops. We just do our best to keep the quality steady and handle the crops as they come. It is a slow process but seeing the mushrooms pop up overnight is always a bit of a surprise even after all these years of farming.