Meghan and Tara met at a Verge Permaculture PDC in 2014, became instant friends, and knew that they would work together on something exciting in the local food movement. Meghan studied and worked in a wide variety of disciplines ranging from international development to IT before purchasing Akesi Farms with her husband Kwesi. Tara is a wildlife conservation biologist who was first introduced to permaculture while working on an organic farm not he BC coast in the late 1990’s. Feeling the desire to get involved in Calgary’s food growing community, she decided to rekindle her interest in permaculture by taking the Verge PDC.

Meghan and Tara realized that they were both intrigued by the many functional roles fungi play in our food and ecological systems and how often it is overlooked and under appreciated in our lives. When the opportunity arose, they decided to pursue mushroom spawn cultivation as a valuable means to contribute to southern Alberta’s growing permaculture and food production community.

Currently Akesi Farms doubles as a home base for Meghan and Tara’s mushroom business, Fungi Akuafo Inc.

Fungi Akuafo Inc. is a small Alberta-based company that provides mushroom spawn for rural and urban farmers, permaculture practitioners, and gardeners.

Its mission: To explore and integrate the ecological, nutritional, and medicinal benefits of fungi into our lifestyles and communities.

Its vision: To collaborate with permaculturists, gardeners, fungi foragers, and food producers to become a valuable information hub and high quality resource for equipment, spawn, and techniques to add fungi into gardens and diets throughout the Prairie provinces.

Currently, Fungi Akuafo’s main focus is selling culinary mushroom spawn for indoor or outdoor cultivation through their online store, but it will soon be expanding its species profile to include medicinal mushrooms and varieties that are beneficial to building healthy soils and plants.

In additional to growing their product line, Meghan and Tara are working to create demonstration sites at their homes in the city and at the farm. They are also developing workshops for exchanging knowledge about various cultivation techniques.