Specialty Coffee Army is a small, specialty coffee roastery who sell both freshly roasted coffee beans and ground coffee. They also have a coffee trailer, which sells batch brew and pour over coffee.

They roast only specialty coffee beans graded at 82+ using a gas roasting machine, following a precise manual roasting method for each batch, creating roasting profiles that match the specific origin of the beans. These profiles cover such subjects as the appropriate grinding methods and the right water temperature using different brewing methods such as batch brew, pour over, gravity press and cold brew.

Their single origin coffees come from a wide variety of places, including Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Kenya, Mexico, Peru and Yemen.

Their coffees are roasted for both filter and espresso or milk based coffees.

They only source their coffee beans through importers that have followed strict specialty coffee rules, including trading ethically with the producers. To help reduce plastic waste, they use recyclable coffee bags that meet RedCycle’s standards.

As well as www.instagram.com/Toxikbeans, they have another Instagram page at www.instagram.com/SpecialtyCoffeeArmy.

Sporadical City Mushrooms is a small urban mushroom farm which supplies a variety of mushrooms to both local restaurants and to the public through box schemes, farmgate sales and markets. They also sell vegan xo sauce, mushroom confit, cold smoked dried mushroom broth, mushroom kits, certified organic mushroom mulch, straw bales and handcrafted chopping boards. They also give farm tours and run mushroom growing workshops.

A good way to buy their mushrooms is by signing up for their 3 month, 6 month or 9 month supply of mushroom boxes, where you also choose how much you want in each box (pick up weekly or fortnightly from the farm in Alphington).  One off purchases also available and welcome. By buying directly from the farmer, you are guaranteeing yourself access to the freshest mushrooms while minimising your ecological food-print and investing in your local economy and food security. This is called Community Supported Agriculture or CSA for short.

Sporadical City Mushrooms aims to be a zero-waste company and chooses to grow their mushrooms in reusable plastic buckets instead of single use plastic bags like most other commercial growers. They believe that cities have a much bigger role to play in feeding themselves and that small scale farming and local food systems are essential for food security & sovereignty, a healthy environment and the future of our community and the planet.

In August 2022, Ann Stanley visited Sporadical City Mushrooms. Read her writeup of the visit.

The video below was produced by www.healthyfreshfoodboxes.com.