The mushroom journal profiles: Helen Linfoot, minskip mushroom farm

摘要

In the days when mushrooms were grown in old fish boxes Helen and her three sisters had great fun building 'dolls houses' with the boxes waiting to be filled with compost by their father, John Lockwood. That their constructions regularly had to be demolished by father needing to get the mushroom crop under way did not discourage them. Before becoming involved in mushroom growing, however, the Lockwood family lived on a small farm near the village of Dent in North Yorkshire. John worked on the railway at night and helped his wife on the sheep-farm during the day. Helen's very early introduction to mushrooms was, in fact, through the wild ones which grew in some of their fields. While Helen and her sisters were quite young, the Lockwood family decided to search for a better life and, in 1960, moved to a mushroom farm near Boroughbridge close to Harrogate in Yorkshire. Of her early life on the sheep-farm, Helen recalls, "it was a bit primitive". She can remember a year spent at the village one-roomschool.