From green fingers to business / Day

Ance Eikens graduated from the Department of Visual Communication at the Latvian Academy of Arts, while Raivis Eikens is a regional development and urban economy engineer by education and has worked in finance and project management until now. At the moment, the main occupation of both is Nora Spora.

Raivis had long dreamed of growing large hedgehogs, but mostly their breeding kits were not delivered to Latvia. “When our daughter Nora was born, he made the decision to go on full parental leave so that we could spend this time together. Then, living in the countryside, that happy walk in the forest also happened and the drive to take this idea more seriously. Since we really like working in the garden, discovering , how to start the mushroom growing process from scratch seemed completely natural.It took many months of research, experiments until we finally arrived at successfully colonized mycelium blocks. There were more than we could grow ourselves, so we shared the news in the Latvian Society of Mycologists, where many people were interested. Seeing how much joy the process of growing mushrooms brought to us and others, we saw the potential for business,” Ance reveals the story of the birth of the project.

In the garden, Raivis is in charge of the greenhouse, Ance is more happy with the flowers, but in the last year she somehow especially felt the need to grow as much food as possible herself, so it looks like the flowers could soon outcompete the courgettes. “We also have a lot of houseplants – not only for aesthetic reasons, but also because we feel the need for life and greenery at home during the dark time of the year. On the other hand, we have passionate mushroom pickers in our family and since we started our company, now everyone is also a mushroom grower .”

They are also both passionate about mushroom picking. This summer, they realized that they had spoiled themselves with the mushrooms they grew, because they don’t need to be cleaned, they don’t have worms and they grow right here at home, but the family really likes to walk in the forest and just enjoy how diverse and unusual the world of mushrooms is. “Of course, we are also only human, and the love language of Latvians – chanterelle sauce – flows into our hearts as well. In fact, while picking mushrooms, Raivi came up with the idea of ​​how cool it would be to have fresh mushrooms in winter as well,” says Ance.

EVEN AESTHETES LIKE IT

Nora Spor the range of mushroom growing kits includes pink, gray and blue oyster mushrooms, slimy scale and hedgehog mushroom. There are also plans to offer black pearl and king oyster mushrooms again this cool season. The most popular among customers are pink oyster mushrooms and urchin big data.