Duo on a journey to success growing mushrooms in mill

They are the entrepreneurs behind Hearty Growers, a mushroom farm in the sprawling former Strand linen mill building at Portview Trade Centre on the Newtownards Road.

Now a centre of enterprise, Portview Trade Centre also features the popular Boundary Craft Brewery, highly regarded Root and Branch coffee roasters and café, and the innovative Neighbourfood collect service for artisan food and drink producers here.

“Portview has become a really creative hub of artisan food companies like Hearty Growers,” says Terry (35), who is originally from Mumbai in India but also has family links with Portugal. Wife Judit, also 35, was born in Budapest. They have two young children, both born in Belfast which is now their home.

The couple met when they were both doing voluntary work on a community development project at Shillong, a hill station, in North East India.

They subsequently travelled to London to continue their studies in organisational management. The enthusiastic travellers visited Belfast during the final stages of their studies….and “fell in love with the city”, according to Terry. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic and everything changed.

“It was an immensely worrying time for us and, of course, for everyone in Northern Ireland,” he continues.

Terry was furloughed for nine months from his role as a luxury cruise-holiday consultant. He turned to volunteering again and found an opportunity to help Biruk, an Ethiopian friend who manages Hahu Organics, an organic market garden at The Walled Garden, near Helen’s Bay.

“I loved working at the Walled Garden,” he says. “It was a tremendous experience being out in the open air again and helping to grow vegetables. I started learning loads of things about farming, from setting beds to composting, seeding, maintaining, then harvesting and boxing them and eventually selling at farmer markets once a week.”

While Terry had no farming experience, he proved to be a quick learner and soon picked up market gardening at Helen’s Bay, a supplier of fresh vegetables to local restaurants and cafes. He began researching opportunities here for other home-grown products especially oyster mushrooms. He subsequently began growing the mushrooms at home, developing a mushroom farm in one of the spare rooms of their home!

“That was a bit of a challenge for the family,” he remembers.

It was redundancy in December 2020 due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that forced the couple to take a long hard look at their income options….and Hearty Growers was born. ​

“We saw the writing on the wall about a possible redundancy and had looked closely at the idea of the oyster mushroom business,” Terry explains.

“We developed a business plan and approached Belfast City Council. The council was extremely supportive. We then began to look for a suitable place to grow the mushrooms and found ideal space in the old spinning mill at Portview Trade Centre, an enterprise centre for smaller artisan businesses.”

They signed a commercial lease with Portview Trade centre in January 2021…and Hearty Growers was up and running. Gourmet oyster mushrooms are grown using hydroponic technology – crops are grown without soil in nutrient-rich water. It proved a successful for the enterprising duo.

​The small company now supplies greengrocers, butchers, and gourmet food retailers especially in east Belfast. Local restaurants are coming on board steadily including celebrity chef Niall McKenna at Hadskis and James St South, and 44 Hill Street and quirky cafe’s like Freight Eastside Containers at Connswater Greenway and on the Lisburn Road.

Another chef now using the mushrooms is Carlos Capparelli, a recent new business start providing ready to cook gourmet dishes from his base in Dundonald. Neighbourfood is also including the mushrooms in its hampers for collection.

In addition to growing fresh oyster mushrooms, Terry and Judit also offer oyster mushroom grow kits ranging from pink, ivory, yellow/gold, grey to Indian oyster mushrooms for customers to grow at home. They will be moving soon to larger space on the ground floor of the mill which will enable them to grow more mushrooms and to expand their business.

They also plan to offer one-day gourmet mushroom growing workshops at their urban farm that will give potential growers a hands-on low-tech method of growing their own gourmet mushrooms at home on a small scale.

Terry sees the venture as “a bit of an extension” from their love of cooking and entertaining: “We are both passionate about good food. There’s Hungarian, Middle Eastern and Indian cuisine that we share between ourselves - we enjoy fusing food together. When we realised we can grow these crops, It just took us to another level.”

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