In April of this year, I managed to block a seat on the Entrepreneurs training course at DMR, Solan (Himachal Pradesh). The overnight journey in a volvo bus, followed by a 2 km walk, up on a hilly terrain (with a luggage that I carried for 8 days) taught me one thing…it’s not going to be easy. But hell! who cares? Sipping my tea at the trainees hostel, talking to my first friend at the training, Saritha, I somehow realized another revelation. That I was going to be the most naive candidate in this batch of training. Almost everyone knew something or the other about mushrooms or farming or agriculture. And here, I was, among those people, a fruit of corporate jungle, trying to find my roots in the soil.
What I achieved in 7 days of training?
First and foremost, I made friends across the length and breadth of India. Right from Ladakh to Nagaland to Gujarat to Tamil…there were some really wonderful people from everywhere, all bubbling and energized about one thing – growing mushrooms!
And of course, I learnt a lot of things about mushrooms. How to prepare compost, make bags, find the right spawn, spawn run, growing rooms, fruiting rooms, temperature control, humidity control, and most important – hygiene.
Whatever you may do to grow mushrooms, whichever variety you may grow, wherever you may grow…one thing that remains consistent throughout is HYGIENE.
What I didn’t get?
Maybe it was because of my inexperience in the field of agriculture and farming or it was really the case that I felt a large gap between practical and theory. We get to learn a lot of idealistic things inside the class rooms, which normally don’t hold true when practically implemented. And that’s exactly what I didn’t get. I felt I could have used a little more practical experience and practice. I came back armed with a lot of theoretical knowledge and must have’s and good to have’s. What I didn’t get was a game plan to begin with.
And that’s where my real journey began. From an idea to a real game plan.
