Food is our Common Ground.

These facts usually lead to a number of questions we get asked all the time. ‘Are they magic?’ (all mushrooms are magical in our eyes). ‘Do they need a damp, dark cellar to grow?’ (we’ll get to that another time). And after those comes the big one:

It’s a fair question. And the answer is one of our favourite things to tell, because it takes you somewhere unexpected - from a converted white grocery truck in 1950s Surrey, to a mushroom farm in West Sussex, and now a growing community of people discovering that mushrooms are, genuinely, one of the most remarkable things on the planet.

We grew up in Surrey, and food was always central to family life. Not in a precious way - in a practical, hands-in-the-soil, what’s-ready-to-pick way. Our parents’ allotment, our grandparents’ plot, time spent helping on a livestock farm in the New Forest. You learn things in those places that no recipe book teaches you: that food tastes different when you’ve grown it yourself, that there’s a particular kind of satisfaction in eating something you’ve had a hand in making, and that the distance between soil and plate is something worth caring about.

Those years shaped everything that came later - even when we didn’t realise it.

Our journey into mushrooms began during a particular chapter of our lives - a time when we came together as a family and found ourselves, as people often do in difficult moments, looking for something to focus on. Something practical and creative to unite us.

And once you start reading about mushrooms, it’s very hard to stop. Their flavour, their beauty, the extraordinary range of varieties that most of us never encounter in a supermarket. In 2018, if you wanted anything beyond a white button, a chestnut or a portobello, you were largely out of luck - or paying for something that had been flown in from the other side of the world. It seemed like a gap that didn’t need to exist.

With a background in hospitality and retail, and a deep-rooted upbringing in just getting on and trying things, we started growing our own mushrooms. As you do.

Our first crop was grey oyster mushrooms, grown on locally sourced, recycled coffee grounds. If you’ve never watched a mushroom grow, it’s worth knowing that it is one of the more quietly astonishing things you can witness in your kitchen. One day: substrate. The next: the beginning of something magical. Within days, a full flush of delicious mushrooms - with a flavour and texture you’ll never have experienced before.

And with that, we were hooked. And apparently, so was everyone around us.

Friends asked how they could do it. Family wanted kits. Before long, we were supplying cafés, pizza vans, independent chefs and neighbours with fresh oyster mushrooms - grown on what most people throw away. What had begun as curiosity in a garage in our dad’s back garden became something real: a small farm, a range of growing kits, and a mission to make mushrooms more accessible, more local and more alive in people’s kitchens.

The name came to us from a generation back.

In the 1950s, our grandparents and great-uncle Bill started a grocery delivery service in Surrey. They converted a white truck with shelves and steps, drove to Borough and Brentford Markets in the early hours, and delivered fresh produce to families across the new, underserved housing estates of Molesey. In time, they opened a shop on the high street - a proper family business, run with the kind of values that seem simple but are actually quite rare: good food, known provenance, looked after by people who care.

That business was called The Caley Brothers.

Decades later, our grandparents were passing the old shop when builders began removing a later shopfront. Behind it - perfectly preserved - was the original hand-painted Caley Brothers sign. They ran to the nearest Woolworths for disposable cameras and photographed it on the spot.

When we started our own food business, there was only ever one name it could be.

Where we are now

Today, The Caley Brothers is a small mushroom farm in West Sussex - with over eight gold and platinum medals for our innovative mushroom exhibits, collaborations with Kew Gardens, the Tate Modern and the RHS, and a book, Project Mushroom. We also run seasonal workshops and masterclasses for a growing community of people who’ve discovered that there is something genuinely wonderful about growing your own food.

Not bad for something that started in a dad’s back garden.

We believe the world needs more small-scale mushroom farmers. We believe in food that doesn’t travel further than it needs to. We believe in the circular economy - in transforming what’s usually wasted into something nourishing. And we believe that once you’ve grown a mushroom, you’ll never quite look at food the same way again.

We’re two sisters. We’re the Caley Brothers. And we’re just getting started.

Read our Journal text on Slow Food to continue learning more about what's important other us 

Mush love