Western Australian farmers innovation for their ‘everlasting’ daisies

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Chrysanthemums, carnations and roses are among the most popular flowers gifted on Mother’s Day. But some Australian native florals are aiming to win an ‘everlasting’ place on that list of favourites. A West Australia farming family is making a name for their everlasting daisies as an alternative to the short-lived varieties.

Transcript

00:00In the golden fields of WA's Wheatbelt, something different is growing at Mobrop.

00:07That's me sneaking a few hectares of land and squeezing Everlastings in.

00:13A crop developed from a fortuitous gift.

00:16I got some seed in my past job from 20 years ago and we just threw it on the ground and see how it went and it's just flourished since then.

00:26Lucinda shares the name of her parents' business while her sister Zara has a product line named after her.

00:31Zara's feeling a little bit down in the hierarchy because Zara's don't do as well as Lucinda's.

00:37So I'm developing at the moment Zara's golden Everlastings again and the crop is going to be amazing.

00:42So we're going to start harvesting the seed for that and start selling it in packets.

00:48The everlasting daisies retain colour and shape once cut.

00:52Growing them at a commercial scale has taken years of trial and error.

00:55The grain works in the theory that you blow the chaff out and the heavy grain drops.

01:01Well I guess Everlastings are a bit different.

01:03The actual, the seed is lighter than the chaff.

01:07So I guess we had to sort of try and work out how to reverse engineer it inside to make it work and that's what we've done.

01:14As the seeds dry they puff up indicating they're ready for packing.

01:20We bought a packing machine which is huge so we actually don't have the space at the moment in the shed for housing that.

01:28As the business grows one thing has remained the same.

01:31I'm just happy for someone to pick some flowers and get the enjoyment that we get out of them.

01:35An everlasting approach to keeping the family farming.

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