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Mushrooming with next-gen homesteaders

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Lenny Prinz and Jodi Collins are next generation homesteaders living in Ōpōtiki, Eastern Bay of Plenty. In 2009, Lenny started as a fungiculturalist: growing mushrooms and cultivating their spawn. Jodi is a potter and artist, committed to growing the couple’s children with the principles of sustainability and child-led learning.

Lenny has expanded the utility of farmed mushrooms by developing compostable packaging using mycelium, as an alternative to polystyrene. Jodi also works using zero-waste principles. In her creative work she upcycles and recycles to produce art with humour and meaning, and more formal pieces.

Nutritional therapist Paula Sharp met Lenny and Jodi at an oyster mushroom workshop, and tells their story here.

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Organic lifestyle 

Ōpōtiki, gateway to the East Cape, has become home for Lenny and Jodi’s family. Their homestead was built in 1907 and now boasts a huge spray-free vegetable garden using agroforestry methods. There are ducks, young chickens turning over the compost heap, while mature hens roam and lay their eggs (unpredictably at times) near their mobile coop.

Three generations live here: Lenny’s father, Lenny and Jodi, and their three children, Juliana (10), Albaer (7) and Iver (2). Life is hectic as they balance planting, growing and harvesting with hunting, home schooling, creativity, mushroom cultivation, the science of mycelium, and agroforestry education.

Lenny’s parents emigrated from Germany in 1990 in the wake of Chernobyl’s creeping contamination concerns. They chose to settle in Whakatāne and later Pikowai, near Matatā, in order to provide an organic lifestyle for their family. Lenny, now is his 30s, is doing the same thing for his family. Lenny and Jodi’s ethos is multi-layered: to connect people with the land and growing, to invest in the future of their family and community, and to live a sustainable and honest life.

Jodi is an advocate for homeschooling, and can offer advice for parents and carers in the homeschooling network, or considering being part it.

ABOVE: Left – Jodi at work on her art
Right – Some of Jodi’s playful creations

Spawning and supporting

In his small sterile (and mobile) laboratory, Lenny grows mushroom spawn. Fourteen years of experience, previously in Raglan, mean that Lenny is an expert in his field. Pink and grey oyster and native tawaka (poplar) mushrooms are currently his most popular.

It takes approximately 14 days to grow Petri dish spawn to colonised substrate ready to fruit. The substrate is a carrier product (for example straw or sawdust), and it’s colonised when the spider web strands of mycelium grow through it. One of Lenny’s business activities is to send spawn and colonised substrate around New Zealand to different growers. They fruit the mushrooms and sell them or use them within their own businesses.

Lenny is driven to support regional growers, particularly now as many small entities have suffered in the post-covid period. Many business costs are increasing, but Lenny is reviewing how to make his products cheaper and more affordable so they can reach more people and help the survival of small businesses. He also coaches and mentors start-up growers to be fully functioning businesses, teaching people how to grow from spawn to then market mushrooms and/or grow their own spawn for marketing purposes.

ABOVE: Left – Lenny Prinz with his compostable packaging made of mushrooms, and oyster mushrooms.
Right – Close-up of oyster mushrooms.

Native mushrooms

Lenny is successfully experimenting with native edible mushrooms in order to supply spawn or mushroom fruit to the New Zealand culinary market. He spends time foraging, on the hunt for endemic species that he can replicate as spawn, picked from local surroundings. New Zealand’s strict biosecurity laws mean there’s no opportunity to import different mushroom varieties, but this doesn’t faze him in the least. “We just need to eat closer to home. I want to make our native mushrooms available to Kiwis.”

Native edibles that Lenny cultivates besides the tawaka and oyster varieties are the New Zealand native shiitake, pekepeke-kiore (New Zealand lion’s mane), enoki, hakeke (wood ear), garden giants (or wine caps because of their colour), turkey tail and the New Zealand reishi (of the Ganoderma family).

Lenny is interested in the nutritional and medicinal value of mushrooms. His most popular medicinal varieties are turkey tail, reishi and hakeke. Turkey tail is a tough, leathery mushroom that is best brewed as a tea or tincture and supports immunity. New Zealand reishi is renowned for its immune-boosting qualities too and supports sleep. Wood ear or hakeke is used to treat colds, reduce fevers, and to strengthen the cardiovascular system. (If you’re new to medicinal mushrooms, always consult a professional before use).

Soil health, mycorrhiza and carbon sinks

The link between mushrooms and other produce is very clear to Lenny; it’s soil health. Good quality soil produces nutrient-dense vegetables, fruit and animals. Mushrooms, specifically mycorrhiza fungi, have a big part to play in soil quality.

Most mushrooms (button, oyster, reishi etc) live and feed on dead matter, whereas mycorrhizal mushrooms grow in close, symbiotic relationships with the living roots of plants or trees. Mycelium strands of the fungi attach themselves to the root of the host, expanding the reach of the root to absorb and transport nutrients and water to the tree. In return, the tree provides the mycorrhiza with sugars and starches produced through photosynthesis.

We would recognise mycorrhizal fungi as the edible fruiting bodies of mushrooms such as truffles, chanterelles and porcini. There are many more which are not edible. Edible mycorrhiza are notoriously difficult to cultivate, but all grow well in the wild. There is even more magic to this relationship: these fungi act as natural carbon sinks. They can hold carbon produced by the host in their tissues and the surrounding soil. Like biochar, mycorrhizal fungi have a part to play in our carbon solution.

ABOVE: Left – Lenny was involved in the installation of this no-dig vegetable garden at the McKenzie family’s home as part of Te Pātaka Kai a Toi mentorship project

Right – Globe artichokes at Jodi and Lenny’s family farm

Sharing the knowledge

Lenny shares his knowledge as a sustainable gardener and mushroom educator. He supports regional growers, and coaches start-up enterprises to fully functioning businesses.

On his land he runs mushroom growing workshops and shares sustainable gardening tips with curious people. He doesn’t keep secrets around his growing techniques but shares his knowledge and experience so others can try it out in their own gardens or with their mushroom growing. For example, after years of using different activated straw as his growing compound for the mushroom mycelium, he has found a soya and pine pellet mix which is affordable, less time consuming and more sustainable.

Gardening and community food sovereignty

Similarly, he shares his version of food forestry, using his land as his example; it works for him. Lenny and Jodi use a variety of growing practices. They’ve created a vegetable garden using companion planting, organic matter, no-till farming practices and agroforestry (larger plants sheltering vulnerable leafy greens and providing pollinating insect food). And it’s working to keep the soil healthy and crops abundant – last season the kūmara patch produced some tubers weighing as much as six kilos each!

Lenny and Jodi have planted a fruit orchard and sell spray-free seedlings cheaply. They’re always thinking of how to give back to the land and its people. More recently Lenny has worked with Ihi Kura Gym to create a garden supplying food to its members, and with Te Ao Hou Trust to project manage local growing ventures. Lenny is helping to grow growers, using the foundations of food sovereignty.

ABOVE: Left – the beginnings of a food forest at Ihi Kura Gym, as a border around a children’s play area
Right – raised beds at Ihi Kura Gym, Ōpōtiki

Compostable fungi packaging

Over the years, Lenny has immersed himself in the science of mushrooms and the various uses for mycelium and mushroom compounds. Perhaps the cap on the top of his fungi is that he’s part of a team spearheading compostable packaging.

As chief technology officer for the company BioFab, Lenny has been instrumental in developing an alternative packaging material made from agricultural waste and mycelium, aimed at replacing polystyrene. This multi-use product can be domestically or commercially composted within 30 days.

BioFab recently located its operations to Australia in order to broaden its reach in the Australasian packaging market. Its mission is ‘to significantly reduce the harm toxic materials are causing to the planet and encourage a world where waste streams regenerate, rather than destroy our natural environment.’ www.biofab.bio/

ABOVE: An example of the compostable mushroom packaging from BioLab

Growing humanity

Perhaps even more important than growing mushrooms, fruit and vegetables is that Lenny Prinz and Jodi Collins are growing humanity. They’re focused on the health and wellbeing of their family, their community, New Zealanders and making change globally. And there’s no doubt this inspiring couple are making a positive difference.

ABOVE: Jodi and Lenny with their children Iver, Albaer and Juliana PHOTO: John Bell

Contacts

Lenny Prinz Mushrooms 021 063 8463 prinzmushrooms@gmail.com

Jodi Collins: misspopinjaycreations@gmail.com Instagram @happybonesart Facebook @misspopinjay

Do you speak mushroom?

  • Cap: The top of the mushroom, gills underneath.
  • Casing layer: A layer of water-holding material, layered on top of a substrate to promote mushroom growth.
  • CO2: Carbon dioxide gas is exhaled by mushrooms.
  • Colonise: Mycelium is grown from one substrate to the next. Once the intended substrate is completely dense with white, it is fully colonised and ready to produce mushrooms or be transferred onto the next substrate.
  • Culture: A pure mushroom strain.
  • Flush: When mushroom substrates produce mushrooms.
  • Fruit-body, fruiting body, mushroom: The edible part of the mushroom
  • Gills: The underside of the cap, thin lines
  • Incubation: Period of time between substrate inoculation to mushroom.
  • Mycelium: This is the bulk of the mushroom; it is a fine root like structure that secretes enzymes digesting material externally.
  • Mycology: The study of fungi.
  • Pasteurisation: Process that kills most spores and other non-beneficial organisms in bulk substrate.
  • Spawn: Sterilised grain or sawdust with a selected mushroom culture grown through it.
  • Spores: Mushroom ‘seeds’. Tiny microscopic single celled reproductive product that are dropped from the gills of the mushroom.
AUTHOR BIO: Paula Sharp is a nutritional therapist working globally via Zoom to support women’s health, restore gut health and digestion, hormonal balance, skin and hair, sleep, shifting weight and health pre- and post-surgery. www.paulasharpnutrition.com
She is also  a guest speaker, giving talks to companies on nutrition and mindset. In London she worked in the organic fruit and vegetable industry, and now she is based in Whakatāne, growing her own extensive spray-free garden.

Spring into Kōanga!

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By Tanya Batt

Tanya Batt shares the story of Spring into Kōanga, a seasonal celebration on Waiheke Island. It’s one of the Kai for Community projects run by the Once Upon an Island Charitable Trust These projects focus on reconnecting with true seasonal celebrations and the stories and traditions around growing, harvesting and sharing food in the Waiheke community.  

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Egg time! 

It’s egg time. Many people often fail to make the connection between eggs, Easter and spring – kōanga. Probably because we celebrate Easter (a northern spring festival) in Australia and New Zealand in autumn.

However if you are lucky enough to have the company of a few chickens, that connection will come as no surprise to you. At this time of year you can be sure of an egg for breakfast. But for many of us, eggs (if you eat them) come from shops and shops always have eggs regardless of the season.

When we lose the connection between our seasons and celebrations, a vacuum is created and celebrations become superficial. Instead of connecting us to our environment, they become focused on what we can buy and how things look, and reverence is often diminished or lost. Upcoming spring Halloween celebrations demonstrate this perfectly.

ABOVE: Laying the tāpapa beds, Piritahi Marae, Waiheke Island, September 2024

September: Laying the tāpapa beds 

Here on Waiheke, we’re seasonally celebrating with Spring into Kōanga – a story in two parts.

The first part took place during September with the return of the pīpīwharauroa (shining cuckoo), in the māra of the Island’s Piritahi Marae, with the laying of the tāpapa beds from which will grow the tipu of the kūmara. These tipu (shoots or slips) will then be sown later in October or early November.

The September event was led by whaea Maikara Ropata, and kaumatua Eugene Behan-Kitto, a master kūmara grower who learnt his growing skills from the late Kato Kauwhata (Ngāpuhi), kaumata and inaugural chairperson of Piritahi Marae. The hope is to grow enough tipu this kōanga, for both the marae māra and other community garden groups, and activate island wide uptake of growing kūmara.

Growing stories and kākano (seed) for the hue (gourd) were also shared in an informal kōrero about this treasured plant – another early arrival bought by the tipuna of tangata Māori. When young, the fruit of this plant can be eaten but as a dried mature fruit it was used a storage vessel, musical instrument and taonga. The day finished with a kōrero given by Mike Smith, a climate activist who has recently won the right to take several large companies in New Zealand to court for failure to curtail their carbon emissions.

Kūmara was the first cultivated crop grown in Aotearoa. Its legacy as a primary food source of the people of this country stretches back several hundred years. The māra kūmara falls under the domain of Rongo-mā-Tāne, the atua of cultivated food and of peace.

October: Pumpkins, corn, tomatoes and more 

Our second event was held on the grounds of another of our community gardens – the Surfdale food forest – on 20 October. The programme included a talk about growing tomatoes with one of our green-fingered gurus, Eddie Welsh, seasonal kai ideas from the Waiheke Home Grown Trust, a spring posy competition, egg decorating and plant giveaways for the summer garden.

The focus was on two plants in particular: pumpkins and corn. Both plants originate from the Americas, their cultivation extending back thousands of years.

There are lots of traditions and stories associated with corn. In Europe, a ‘corn mother’ or ‘the old woman’ or ‘corn dolly’ was made out of corn (though corn was a generic word used for grain). The corn dollies were kept in the barn to protect the crops during winter, and then ploughed into the ground come spring to ensure a good harvest.

This tradition resonates strongly with another story of corn, which is told by a number of North American First Nations people from the eastern and south-western areas, where from the first mother’s body grew the first maize plants.

Attendees were given free pumpkin seedlings and corn seed, accompanied by a story and a song and were encouraged to bring their harvests to the Autumn Kai for Community Waiheke Food Festival in April 2025. The pumpkin seedlings were germinated by the students of the Waiheke Primary School’s Garden to Table programme. This programme was also the source of the pink popping corn seed that will be distributed for growing over summer, again culminating in a island-wide ‘pop-a-thon’ in autumn.

A primary focus of the Kai for Community programme is to excite and support families to grow food at home, fostering the green hearts and fingers of young children. Both Spring into Kōanga events have been generously supported by the Waiheke Local Board and are part of the Waiheke Island Climate Action plan.

The relationship we have with the land we live on, the food we grow and eat and each other are the cornerstones of wellbeing. Celebrating our seasons brings these three important things together and helps create healthy and happy hapori (communities).

Hollie Pierson with a Kai for Community tea towel
Opening ceremony, Kai for Community Harvest festival in April

Tanya Batt is a word warbler and seed sower living on Waiheke Island. Her two passions – storytelling and gardening – have found a happy union in the work she does as a storytelling gardener at a local school and through her role as creative director of the Once Upon an Island Charitable Trust’s Kai for Community (KFC) projects.

www.imagined-worlds.net

ABOVE: Tanya Batt with Chinese cabbage