Rick Storrier with his wife Jenny and daughters Evie, Olivia and Isabelle at the Riverina Producers’ Market. Photos: Shri Gayathirie Rajen.
Who are you and what is your business? My name is Rick Storrier and our business, Ten Thousand Harvests, is all about micro-farming. It’s a small-scale microgreen production we do in our Wagga Wagga backyard. The mushrooms are produced in a shipping container.
We’ve always been looking at how we can take care of our health and these two (microgreens and mushrooms) come to mind for being good for you. It’s why we went down this track of growing the microgreens in a good clean, organic compost we make at home.
Where did you begin? I started mucking around growing vegetables three years ago, about three months into the pandemic, but it started to fail. I always had a thing about growing and eating good-quality food, so I decided to start a little regenerative vegetable-growing business. I was growing it on a friend’s block in a floodplain and we got flooded out last year. With time pressures, we scaled back and started doing it in our backyard with microgreens.
A few years back, I heard scientists talk about the rate of soil degradation with our current agricultural system and that we’d only have 60 harvests left. Our goal is to reverse that trend, and that’s how Ten Thousand Harvests came to mind. We want to create a system where we can sustainably grow food for 10,000 years.
Ten Thousand Harvests produces various microgreens.
What do you produce? We produce microgreens, radish, peas and broccoli. We also produce oyster mushrooms and have a few others in the pipeline.
What do you sell that makes a great gift? Good-quality food is always a great gift for some.
What would you make if you could do anything? [A beaming Rick looks at his family and his produce before responding] I think I’m doing it.
How would you promote the Riverina? It’s an open space with grounded people. You get a sense of community.
Ten Thousand Harvests’ oyster mushrooms.
Where’s your favourite place for a cuppa? The Brew, Larry’s and Meccanico.
Who is another local producer you admire? Rewild and Jeremy’s flowers. What also stands out for me is the producers who follow a similar farming philosophy to what we do. I admire the producers who are not taking the easy path.
We need to change the way we currently grow food … I don’t think we can call it food with most of our food system. It’s absolute rubbish. It’s been processed to the point where it has no nutrition or grown in soil depleted of biology and nutrients.
You can learn more about Ten Thousand Harvests here.
Region Riverina is committed to celebrating our local producers and creatives and encourages everyone to buy locally.
If you’re aware of someone who’s making something amazing, let us know!
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