Friday 15 June 2007

Rainforest Mushrooms

When we first come to Brother Mathew Luke and his wife Christine’s small mushroom farm and café, it is for a yoga retreat organized by Rainbow Yoga.

On the right, just after the Pond Cassé junction, on your way to the Melville Hall airport, coming from Roseau, you see the sign. And the place – it is hard to tell if it is a café, a mushroom farm, an art studio or their home, all of it wonderfully mixed up, I think – is just like the colorful and flourishing sign: Welcoming, friendly and homemade.

At the outdoor veranda we are served a delicious fruit juice and have some time to chat with the other participants in this “Yoga in the Rainforest” retreat. Including our son, who just turned one and just learned to walk, there are six of us from Roseau, and another four or five from Ross University in Portsmouth.

During a brief tour through the Mushroom farm, the only one in the Caribbean, we learn a great deal on growing mushrooms. Which turn out being more of a science than farming. And as I immediately understand I can not do this at home, I concentrate on the surroundings, on the sounds and the smells, on the intense beauty of this fully organic “production site”, in the middle of the rainforest. And on when we get to taste those indigenous gourmet oyster mushrooms that grow everywhere and in all different sizes, in the “greenhouse”. We do, of course, and there is little comparison.


The mushrooms are cultured first out of spawn and then multiplied in sawdust or grain. Today the majority of the mushrooms are cultivated in bagasse (pressed sugar cane from the rum industry) mixed with sawdust and coffee husks. After inoculation the mix is put in sterile containers and left in the dark for ten days before being put in strong light and high humidity conditions. Harvesting can then start after another ten days, in ten-day-intervals. The mushrooms we get to taste directly from the cultivations are the oyster mushrooms, and they are exquisite, juicy and soft, full of flavor, perfect in texture. One of the participants tells us she got sick when she first discovered the Rainforest Mushroom farm. Not because of the mushrooms, she explains, but because “I just couldn’t stop eating.”

One of the reasons for our visit is to do a yoga class in the middle of the forest. So we find our spots and the strongest memory is when it towards the end of the class starts to rain. It takes, of course, a while for the raindrops to trickle their way down to us on the ground. But standing in the middle of the forest, looking up towards the treetops and seeing the perfectly shaped drops slowly, slowly – at least that is what it feels like – fall down towards you, and finally land on your cheeks or forehead, is amazing. Now, this look up at raindrop thing can be done almost everywhere, as Dominica is almost completely covered with easy accessible, lush rainforest, and a day seldom passes by without a little rain.

Brother Mathew’s lunch is outstanding. It is local, it is organic, it is vegetarian and full of mushrooms, it is abundant and it is delicious. If you want to come, to be on the safe side, making a reservation is highly recommended.

The oyster mushroom also grow wild on Dominica, and mushroom gathering has long been a tradition. Eating the islands mushrooms is said to be one of the reasons the island can boast of a higher percentage of centenarians than any other country on earth.

Behind the café veranda is the arts and music studio. One by one we all enter, wander along, look at completed and not so completed art works. Incense, oils, crafts, hand painted t-shirts, paintings, posters, musical instruments, bush teas and more are carefully arranged in a chaotically esthetic disorder, all for sale. Then, the music is turned on and the instruments are taken out, both the ones we brought and the ones in the house. Guitar, drums, thumb piano, maracas, hand clapping, wonderful singing and a whole lot of laughing is mixed with the reggae beats from the music equipment. Brother Mathew is a great dancer.

How to do this: For info on the Rainforest Mushrooms café, on lunches and guided farm tours, see their web page. For info on Rainbow Yoga retreats, see their web page.

How to get there:
While coming from Roseau, you drive towards Marigot and Melville Hall airport, Just when you pass the Fond Cassé junction, look out to your right. There you see the sign. Get of the bus or park your car and walk the short path to the place.

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Sarah Coffin said...

Do you know if this place still exists? The website link doesn't work. Thank you!