Watching the grass grow brings in the dough
– By Clint Jasper
To listen to Paul’s radio interview, click here.
Over the past decade, more and more farmers have had to seek out an off-farm stream of income.
Often it’s involved family members doing fly-in fly-out work on the mines, or contract work in town.
But a broadacre farming family from Pinnaroo have decided instead to sit back and watch the grass grow.
For Paul and Tracey Daniel, going into the turf business has allowed them to hitch their wagon to the housing and construction industry.
But according to Mr Daniels it all got off to a shaky start, with the first one hectare patch of hand planted turf all dying.
Since that dispiriting start, the area of turf planted has increased to 24 hectares, and the business side of things has grown from ‘basically nothing’ to the farm’s major stream of income.
“The turf itself is not an agricultural product, it’s a building product, so it’s linked to that industry,” Mr Daniels says.
“It gives us diversity form agricultural income, it’s a totally different industry so it spreads out income, which is what you need in agriculture right now.”
Mr Daniels says he expects the business to grow even further once people start to see their astro turf start to fade.
