There’s nothing wrong with a borrowed idea. Make a few modifications and voila. You’ve got something to work with.
The Nov. 21 issue of the Globe and Mail had just such an idea. All it needs is some prairie gumption combined with an understanding of people’s appreciation for their roots.
According to the story, an Irish entrepreneur has set up a lucrative business by shipping Irish soil to American expatriates and those of Irish extraction who lack the funds, ability or wherewithall to personally visit the Emerald Isle.
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Alan Jenkins of County Cork had at the time of the Globe story shipped about 160,000 12-ounce bags of Irish soil to the United States for $15 US apiece. That’s $2.4 million, for those averse to doing the math.
Jenkins and a partner found a way to sanitize the material to meet U.S safety requirements, reported the Globe, and Official Irish Dirt has become a business that might soon be franchised.
Hold that thought.
Now think about all the retired farmers you know and all the country mice turned city mice and all the people whose ancestors homesteaded a virgin patch of sod on the Prairies.
That’s probably a sizable number of folks.
Wouldn’t they too enjoy a sample of the very soil that first nurtured their roots? Wouldn’t a piece of Grandpa’s homestead be a great keepsake for each member of the family in current and future generations?
Detailed settlement maps, detailed modern maps, a permission-from-current-landowner process and some Western Producer advertising could put someone in the soil souvenir sales business.
With a little legwork, an enterprising sort could collect samples from the very spot where a customer’s grandfather’s soddie once stood.
A word of warning: it has to be someone who’s not afraid to get their hands dirty. And it has to be someone who can, like Jenkins, sanitize the samples for safety’s sake. Even if shipping domestically, you wouldn’t want to responsible for spreading weeds or anthrax.
Sure, there will be those who say that selling dirt to farmers is like selling snow to Eskimos, but those are the people who underestimate the average farmer’s affinity for the soil and all that it represents.
The Irish-Americans who patronize Jenkins’ business want the soil to sprinkle on their graves when they pass. Morbid bunch, those Irish. The soon-to-be-established Prairie Sod Souvenir business might do better to concentrate on keepsakes.
Care to get in on the ground floor, pun intended?
