Featured Turfgrass Article
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Over Half a Century of Providing Quality Sod in Texas Murff Turf Farm has been operating as a sod farm in Crosby, Texas for the past 52 years. The founder, Bill Murff passed away just a few years ago and now his three children, Scott, Lindy and Reneé lead the business forward. Bill Murff was a teacher in the 1960s that got into landscaping during his summer breaks. He found that he kept needing more grass than he could get. He would buy sod from a nearby town but then he ultimately decided he wanted to grow his own grass on the 15 acres of land he owned. So, he founded Murff Turf Farm in 1969. “He planted his first crop and killed it all with chemicals. Then he replanted about 10 acres of sod. He would have his customers come while he was teaching school and cut their own grass with his hand sod cutter,” Lindy Murff said. Then Bill bought 15 more acres of land next door to expand his operations. In 1974 he quit teaching and became a full-time sod farmer. Bill was a very innovative farmer, one who bought land and planted sod continually until he grew the farm business into its now nearly 4,000 acres of turfgrass. Sometimes he would buy land and start growing before irrigation systems were even set up. Lindy said that they have meetings with their farm managers every morning and they have little sayings that Bill used to say at these meetings. Lately, Murff Turf Farms has had a slight dry spell and could really use some rain. “Dad would always say ‘well, we’re one day closer to a rain.’ So every day we don’t get rain, even though it’s a drought, we’re one day closer,” Lindy said. When Lindy was a young teenager working on the farm, he remembers there were many days when they’d be stacking their last pallet of grass of the day and all the kids were getting excited to go play. “And it seemed like dad always would come out and say ‘we need to cut 20 more pallets’ and we’d all be like ‘oh no not 20 more’,” Lindy laughed. “We didn’t understand the importance of selling the grass, we just wanted to get our work done to go swimming or something.” “It’s those little things you know. He always had little sayings,” he continued. “Dad passed away five years ago. He taught us a lot. He taught us how to work. He looked at things fairly simply and we’ve kind of carried that on.” Lindy said they focus on trying to produce a good quality product and get it to the customers. “The more things you add on, I feel like the more things you maybe take
