in the family

From cultivating oyster mushrooms in a small shed, to becoming the UK’s leading producer of woodland mushrooms, Tim Livesey’s business is booming. He tells us why his fungi are so fantastic…

The Livesey family has been in mushroom farming for generations; Tim runs Livesey Brothers with his two sons William and Daniel (right), and his daughter Harriet

Hands up if you’ve ever felt just a little daunted by the packs of weird and wonderful-looking exotic mushrooms you can find on our shelves? The likes of oyster mushrooms, fan-shaped caps; or clusters of brown maitake with frilly edges. They can have a bad rep, of being tricky to cook, or needing lavish ingredients to complement them.

But these preconceptions are nonsense, mushroom farmer Tim Livesey enthuses. ‘You can use exotic mushrooms in just the same way you’d use your regular closed-cup mushroom – pop them in a pie or eat them on toast. I like to fry them with just a little bit of olive oil and add a tiny sprinkling of salt, to bring out the flavour.

‘I’ve been assured by a chef that you cannot destroy a mushroom, no matter how bad a cook you are!’ says Tim. ‘A lot of people may be afraid of them because they don’t want to spoil them, but mushrooms are hardy and robust. You have to work hard to botch a mushroom.’

Tim has dedicated his career to cultivating the perfect crop. He’s a founder of the Livesey Brothers, who have been supplying Asda with exotic woodland mushrooms since 1987. The farm is in the very heart of the National Forest in rural Leicestershire – an appropriate growing place.

It was Tim’s father, Tom, who he has to thank for kickstarting his interest in mushrooms many years ago. ‘My father started growing mushrooms in 1960. In those days, if you wanted to grow your own mushrooms you had to make your own compost because there was no central place doing it. All my childhood days were spent on the farm, moving compost around with a fork. It’s completely different to what we do now, but it gave me a good background: it’s all about control and the need to have the right environment.’

From tiny spores...

Tom was winding down when Tim wanted to get into business, and he wasn’t keen to employ his exuberant son. So, in 1985 Tim went about setting up his own venture, with a unique selling point.

‘Growing button mushrooms back then was competitive – you needed a lot of investment to become efficient and I didn’t have that sort of money. So, I thought about growing something unusual. The oyster mushroom was the first mushroom I tried – I managed to grow some in a coal shed. I was a little nervous about eating the first one! But I did, and it was delicious.’

Harmlessness confirmed, Tim took a basket of his produce to a chef at a fancy Loughborough hotel who, impressed, ordered as much as Tim could produce. Tim converted a tractor shed into a growing room and before long was producing too much for the hotel. He began picking up business in Covent Garden and regularly travelled to London to deliver his prized oyster mushrooms.

When he started supplying Asda in 1987, he needed more investment. The first bank he approached turned him away, dismissing his ideas as ‘pie in the sky’ and his produce as ‘yuppy food’ that ‘no one would want to eat’. Luckily, the second bank manager had more faith.

Tim made research trips to China and Japan for intel on technology and equipment and he started importing shiitake mushrooms from countries such as Sri Lanka and Thailand, but that wasn’t ideal for his bank balance, or the planet. ‘We didn’t have the controls in place either,’ explains Tim. ‘We had a degree of control but not enough. So we built a big production facility to grow shiitake mushrooms. Now we don’t import any mushrooms at all. It’s much more sustainable. Every part of the process is done on site.

On the farm

All of the mushrooms grown on the farm are wood-destroying fungi, which would be found growing on fallen trees and stumps in the wild. Tim recreates these by making ‘logs’ from waste sawdust, straw and other nutrients all grown locally, blended on the farm and pressed together to form a block. Tim has a secret recipe for each blend of sawdust for each different species. The blocks are then sterilised using hot steam to kill any competitive moulds.

During incubation mushroom fibres, known as mycelium, grow through the blocks and colonise them. As the mycelium digests the sawdust it is actually breaking it down, degrading or recycling it in fact, just as in the wild.

Once the incubation phase is completed the blocks are moved to the fruiting rooms. They are rearranged onto racks to give the mushrooms space to grow. This is where the mystery and magic of mushrooms really happens. Tim modifies the climate in the room, fooling the mycelium into thinking it is autumn, and it’s this climate shock that forces the mycelium to fuse together at the surface to form fruit bodies, or mushrooms. The caps burst out from the blocks creating otherworldly scenes – shelves full of logs covered in unusually shaped fungi, their unique scents wafting in the gentle currents of this woodland display.

‘We don’t use any chemicals, pesticides or fertilisers anywhere in the process,’ says Tim. ‘The only thing we use on-site is a detergent for washing a growing room or a works surface for hygiene purposes, and nothing comes into contact with the growing materials or the mushrooms themselves.’

Cultivating mushrooms isn’t a walk in the park. They’re sensitive little organisms that need very particular conditions and a watchful eye to flourish. Each species has different and precise nutritional requirements.

Tim recently bought out his brother, Simon, who’s retired, and is now joined by his two sons and one daughter. The benefit of working as a family has helped them through, Tim reckons.

Mushrooms On Toast

Keep your mushrooms in tip-top condition by gently brushing them clean – don’t submerge in water, as the moisture will affect their texture and flavour. Heat a knob of butter or splash of oil in a frying pan set over a medium heat, then add your mushrooms along with a pinch of sea salt and some chopped fresh thyme, if you like. Sauté for 5 mins then tumble on top of toasted sourdough spread with a little cream cheese and dig in!

‘We’ve all got a common goal and common focus and we’ll work through any differences. I’m very blessed to have two sons and a daughter, all with different strengths. William is mechanically minded and looks after the maintenance of the property; Daniel is good at record keeping and data analysis; my daughter, Harriet, looks after supply to supermarkets, plus sales and marketing. Even though they’re all genetically the same, they’re very different from each other, and it’s good to call on that wide skill base.’

Plant-based power

Tim and the next generation of Liveseys are now concentrating on cultivating four species of exotic mushroom – shiitake, oyster, eryngi (king oyster) and maitake. You may have seen them on our shelves – fascinating shapes and sizes, all full of flavour and texture, perfect for pepping up your home-cooked meals.

With the rise in popularity of plant-based diets, it’s meant in 2019 Tim doubled the size of the growing facility. ‘Thirty years ago these mushrooms might have been seen as cheffy ingredients,’ Tim admits, ‘But people are eating out more often now. They’re seeing these mushrooms on restaurant menus, then when they’re cooking at home, they want the ingredients to spice up their meals – our range of mushrooms can certainly help there.’

We wonder, as our conversation draws to a close, is there anything this dedicated grower doesn’t know or love about the industry? ‘Just don’t ask me if I’m a fun-gi,’ he laughs.

Mushrooms are arranged on racks in fruiting rooms, giving them space to grow, filling the air with their unique scent