Markwood Mushrooms began with an idea and the motivation to just give it a go.

 

In January 2021, Adam, Emma and their young family relocated from Myrtleford to a three-acre property in Markwood, Victoria. Adam had grown up on acreage and wanted the same for his kids. Space, land, and a life connected to it.

 

Adam was working at a trout farm at the time and had become hooked on the idea of high-yield, low-impact farming. The problem was, you can't run a trout farm on three acres. Adam's stepfather John Ward, a data scientist and mathematician, had an idea. What if you applied artificial intelligence, sensors and machine learning to mushroom growing? So together the two couples, Adam and Emma Beauchamp, and John Ward and Roni Beauchamp, became the founding family of Markwood Mushrooms.

 

In early 2022 we started building the farm.

 

The first setup consisted of a shed fitted with a split system, a homemade humidifier, two grow tents, a darkroom and a makeshift lab. We inoculated our first mushroom blocks in May 2022 and six weeks later we harvested our first crop of Lion's Mane mushrooms. By September we attended our first Wangaratta Farmers Market and by October we had landed our first wholesale account.

 

Today Markwood Mushrooms operates out of three shipping containers and grows around eleven varieties of mushrooms. We supply approximately twenty restaurants across the region and attend markets every weekend. Since May 2025 we have been opening the farm gates once a month for Open Farm Days, which have quickly become one of our favourite parts of the job.

 

But high-yield, low-impact farming is still farming.

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Our farm has had its share of ups and downs along the way. From contamination, supply issues and failed sensors the farm has tested us in ways we didn't expect. Through all of it the question has never been whether to keep going. It's always been, how do we keep going!

 

We're proud of what we've built and excited about where it's going. More regions, more open days, more cultivation classes, more good mushrooms. High-yield, low-impact farming isn't just how we grow. It's what we believe food production can and should look like.