MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
TURFGRASS IS A FAMILY LEGACY for TOM SAMPLES PROFESSIONAL of the Year RECIPIENT
BOB McCURDY By Julie Holt
Bob accepts the Tom Samples Professional of the Year Award at the 2022 TTA Conference
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If
you want to visit Dyer, Tennessee, you’ll have to be going there on purpose. It’s not really on the way to anywhere, and for most people it’s not exactly a destination. But for the McCurdy family, it’s both the starting and end points of a journey built on a legacy of faith, community, and honest work. Located in Dyer, McCurdy Sod Farms is a turfgrass island in the sea of row crops on the flat, fertile landscape of northwest Tennessee. The McCurdy family has called this area home for generations, and their impact has gone far beyond the land and soil they cultivate. Bob McCurdy, the 2022 recipient of the Tom Samples Professional of the Year award, is the senior partner of the farm and a stalwart leader in both Dyer, Tennessee and the turfgrass community. Bob McCurdy’s influence in the sod production segment has certainly been immense, but it’s the impression he’s made across the industry that has allowed him to be a true leader and example for turfgrass professionals of all stripes.
A CHANGE OF COURSE Like so many others, the McCurdys began their farming days in row crops. Anyone familiar with the area will tell you that outside of Memphis, west Tennessee is nothing but farmland, with the occasional small town built in the middle of it. While the industrial landscape in the area is now ramping up with the incoming Ford megasite near Memphis, for decades, career choices have funneled heavily to farming and manufacturing. It is this culture that nurtures the love of the land that local farmers need in order to make it through the lean years. Bob McCurdy says he knew very early that he wanted to raise his three children on the farm, and to provide them with the opportunity to continue that family business as they grew up. When the row crop route dealt some blows that the family farm, then run by Bob and his father, Raymond, couldn’t overcome, they began looking for new opportunities to keep the family farm alive. Some short-term solutions included vegetables and seed cleaning operations, but it was a construction project where the seed of sod farming was planted. “We were doing some conservation construction — backhoe work, dirtpan work. Those sites always needed some type of erosion control. We had all these pastures where we had cows, and we’d go out and steal a little bermudagrass and place in those areas,” Bob says. “Our closest sod farm was in Mississippi. But nobody did that, everybody that we knew and in our area were green thumbs, ag-related.” In 1986, when Bob and Suzanne’s twins, Jay and Tom were just two years old, the simple beginning of McCurdy Sod Farm was when “we bought a little grass and put out enough to plant a couple acres.” By 2006, sod was the only crop the farm was growing. But those 20 years are not to be overlooked. Because of their determination to continue the family business, through the years, the McCurdys added acreage and staff to their operation. Jay and Tom, along with their younger sister Liz grew up on a family farm, just as Bob and Suzanne had hoped. “We did it, which was quite a success, in our opinion. We weathered some storms getting there, but eventually got out of vegetables and row crops, and we concentrated on sod.”
TENNESSEE TURFGRASS FEBRUARY / MARCH 2022 Email TTA at: info@ttaonline.org
