Jess Coulson

This month we catch up with the co-owner of Ruffle Farm, which grows and supplies gourmet mushrooms in Sydney's inner west.

- WORDS ALICE WASLEY

How did you get into farming? My husband Joel and I had pretty standard jobs; he was an engineer and I worked in retail. We were both super sick of it, and in 2020 we quit, moved to Europe, and did a bunch of farm work. But we really missed our friends and Sydney. We asked ourselves: How can we be connected to the earth and close to our friends, music, culture and food?

And you arrived at mushrooms as the answer? We'd been growing mushrooms as a hobby for eating at home, and realised it's such a small space requirement that we could scale it up and farm in the city. We moved back from Europe and just went for it.