Our Cash Crop Pays Us $6,534.00 An Acre

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Bear in mind. too, that this is no "get rich quick" business we're talking about. The dollar yield per acre for sod can be extremely attractive ... but the payoff comes only once on each crop and only after one full year. Plan accordingly.

Just because I've quoted the amount of money that one acre of sod will yield. doesn't mean that you have to start on that scale. A city lot measuring only 70 by 150 feet can produce sod worth $1,575. That's worth going after, and many people with pieces of ground no bigger than that do, indeed, go after it.

And, to close on a bright note, I'd like to emphasize that this is one small enterprise that pays well for a really minimum amount of effort. Our acre "cash crop" of sod always takes far less effort from us than the much smaller garden we raise every year. We simply reseed each section of the "lawn"as we harvest it ... and then let the new grass do most of the work.

Nope. This isn't the ideal sideline businness for everyone. But, for us, it's been a welcome way to earn a fairly substantial sum of money every year ... with a minimum amount of work. Truly, our sod operation has helped us put our homestead on a self-supporting basis much faster than we'd ever have reached that goal without it.

So fast, in fact, that—after three years—we're now phasing this particular cash crop out entirely because we really don't need it anymore. I hope, if you decide to try it, that the sod business is as good to you.

WHAT ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF SELLING SOD?

At first glance, it may seem that cutting sod from a piece of land is a terribly destructive thing to do. And it is. But it's no more destructive, in the long run, than raising hay or wheat or corn or cattle on the same piece of land and then shipping any one or all of those "crops" away for sale in the next state or in a country halfway around the world. Kept up long enough without the application of restorative "organic" matter, any one of the above forms of farming will eventually deplete the soil just as surely as any of the others. It's just that sod farming does it more obviously than most forms of agriculture.

As a matter of fact, a better environmental case can be made for raising sod than for some of the other forms of agriculture mentioned here in at least one respect: Sod is very seldom hauled from one state to another—let alone from one country to another-so the organic value of a sod farm's product, on the average, stays much closer to home than the corresponding value of a wheat, corn, cattle, etc., farm's product.

And, to consider just one other aspect of the situation, no one can deny that thousands of acres ravaged by floods, strip mining, and other disasters—both natural and man-made—have been restored by sod transplants. Yet how many acres have transplants of wheat, corn, or cattle ever restored? So you pays your money and you takes your choice. But whatever that choice may be— whatever crop you decide to raise—please do your farming in such a way that you leave the land a little better every year than it was the year before. —The Editors.

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