Pad en Stoel – Mushroom Farming lessons
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” – Eleanor Roosevelt.
Pad en Stoel was an urban farming mushroom project in the city of a girls best friend: Antwerp, Belgium. The farm was highly popular and successful, yet in the end closed its doors.
Co-founder Zjef Van Acker already wrote down a detailed account of the 5 biggest mistakes they made with the business. And now we also put him in front of the camera to get more step-by-step details on what went wrong, but also on what went right.
Picture by Cathy Verhulst – 2019
Zjef has been in the urban and vertical farming scene since 2012. He worked for numerous local and global network organisations, started up the education division for the Association for Vertical Farming, founded the 12 steps to farming in 2016 and talked to so many farmers and aspiring farmers.
It was written in the stars that he would have been ready in 2018 to start a farm. Yet, he wasn’t finished learning. According to him he had all the needed knowledge to run a successful farm, he just did not have the emotional maturity and wisdom yet.
12 steps of Pad en Stoel
Emotional maturity and wisdom to run a farming business? What does this all mean?
There are not many farms or farmers that openly talk about their errors. Definitely use this opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others, so you don’t have to make them yourself! Click here for the full episode!
Important notice: Joachim Sohie (middle of the picture), one of the founders of Pad en Stoel, passed away while making the documentary about the company he gave so much love and passion to.
Joachim was an incredibly hard worker, idea-machine and lover of mushrooms and farming. We would like to honour him by dedicating this 12 steps documentary to him!
