Reno (from left) and Luke Schembri. Photo: Supplied

As a little tacker helping his father Reno grow lucerne as a hobby, Luke Schembri was fascinated by turf farms.

“We always enjoyed doing the lucerne and going up and down on the tractor,” he said.

“And when we were contracting, we were always looking at turfies and the growers who were out working. It was something I was always interested in and something I wanted to do. We eventually bought our own farm down here at Cornwallis, New South Wales and we set it up as a lucerne farm, but we had a little square that we thought might be a good opportunity to put some turf in and give it a go. It started from there.”

Luke’s Turf Supplies has come a long way since those modest beginnings in 2016.

For the first two years Luke and Reno grew the turf and a neighbour, Trevor McDonald of Associated Turf Supplies, bought most of it.

As they became more confident and expanded the area of plantings to a commercial scale, they contracted Trevor to cut the turf, and Luke began delivering orders with a ute and trailer.

Reno continued his kitchen business and Luke completed his apprenticeship as a cabinet maker, but found the siren call of the turf too strong to resist.

“I did enjoy (cabinet making) but, because we always did the farm on the side, that always had my eye,” he said.

They bought 40ha at Bathurst in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales and relocated the lucerne operation there, devoting the site near Cooley Creek solely to turf production.

And after turning his back on cabinet making, Luke began working part-time for Graeme Colless at Dad and Dave’s Turf, a 15 minute drive away but just 2.5km as the crow flies across a gooseneck in the Hawkesbury River.

There he has learned more about turf care, mowing, harvesting and deliveries, as well as gaining a better understanding of the business side of an enterprise.

“I’ve been with Graeme for about a year, doing a few days a week and he’s pointed me in the right direction and helped me out a lot,” Luke said.

Last year the Schembris bit the bullet and bought their own equipment, a Brouwer hand stack harvester which cuts 18-inch rolls of sod and a Kenworth truck – equipped with a Moffett forklift – capable of carting up to 500 square metres of turf at a time.

The farm now has 10ha of turf in production and another 6ha is being prepared for future plantings.

Varieties include Buffalo, Couch and Kikuyu, but Luke recently signed-up with Lawn Solutions Australia (LSA), and is planning to change some paddocks over to LSA varieties such as Zoysia Australis, TifTuf Hybrid Bermuda, Eureka Kikuyu and Sir Walter DNA Certified Buffalo.

Luke has Graeme to thank for the move.

“One day I was walking around Graeme’s place and he looked at me and asked if I wanted to be a part of it,” he recalled. “I said ‘Yeah’, and he introduced me to them (LSA) and got the ball rolling.”

Luke said they had visited the LSA office and farm near Berry to learn about how the national network of turf growers and resellers operated, and have discussions with the National Manager, Simon Adermann.

Luke’s older sister Annalese has been enlisted to look after administration, book keeping and answer the phones, while Reno has wound back the hours he spends in his kitchen business to give him more time on the farm.

“At the farm it’s just me and him,” Luke said. “He’s always pushed me to do what I love to do and motivated me to keep on top of things since I was a little kid sitting in the tractor with him. I do what I do because he does it.”

Luke also was keen to join Turf Australia, making the 23-year-old one of the organisation’s youngest members.

“I believe in giving back to the industry,” he said. “I thought I can’t go wrong by putting my name down and signing-up.”

One of his priorities is to continue educating the public about turf production as a potential career for young people, even if they weren’t born into a turf farming family.

A typical day for Luke starts before sunrise when he loads the truck with turf cut the previous afternoon and heads off to make deliveries.

Most orders are from residential and commercial customers in the Greater Sydney area, although he has delivered turf as far as the central coast, Newcastle and Wollongong. Luke also arranges for contractors to lay turf when requested by clients.

One of the more unusual jobs was providing 1270 square metres of Kikuyu to the Symbio Wildlife Park near Helensburgh, south of Sydney.

Once all the turf has been delivered for the day, Luke heads back to the farm where he checks the orders, and attends to the irrigation and spraying schedule before getting ready to cut the next batch of turf.

Reno and Luke share most of the farm duties and their aim in the next few years is to increase the proportion of sales to landscapers and commercial clients, hence the move into LSA varieties that are popular in that sector.

Having access to an experienced mentor like Graeme came in handy after the Hawkesbury flooded multiple times in 2021 and 2022.

Luke said they were fortunate, compared to other growers in the area who experienced major losses of both turf and infrastructure.

“It came up and went down pretty quickly, so there was more of a cleanup process than damage which was pretty good,” he said.

But three wetter than average years – including almost 1500mm in 2022 which was twice the annual average rainfall – resulted in several mild outbreaks of fungal disease that were mowed out.

Luke’s biggest issue at the moment is weeds still germinating from seed dropped along with the silt that was deposited during the most recent flood in July 2022.

Now that El Nino has kicked in, conditions have quickly turned to the other extreme, with Bureau of Meteorology records showing Cornwallis had received just 437mm of rain in the first 10 months of 2023.

“It is very dry at the moment,” Luke said. “I can’t seem to put enough water on.”

This article appeared in the Summer 2023-24 edition of Turf Australia magazine