Taylor Family Produce

Raymon Taylor ‐ Grower

For four generations the Taylor family has been a vegetable farming family. The tradition began in 1914 with William John Taylor who bought a farm in Michelton in Brisbane. The operation was soon a success and more members of the family followed John into the business.

By 1968 they had outgrown their land and the family picked up and moved to Redland Bay. Today they are still there, but also have another farm in the Granite Belt region of Amiens, which they acquired in 1992 in order to extend their growing season. At the same time they established The Taylor Family Produce company and handed the reigns to the 4th generation of Taylors; Raymon, Geoffrey and Wayne.

"The Granite Belt in the southern highlands of Queensland is a high altitude location and benefits from warm summer days and cool summer nights. The granite sand in the area that makes up the soil is great for growing in, it has an excellent supply of natural minerals and gives our products beautiful textures, flavours and colour." ‐ Raymon Taylor

Raymon, the current Managing Director of the Amiens property, knew he wanted to be a farmer since the age of ten, when he worked with his father on the Redland Bay farm. As the eldest son, he was entrusted with a lot of responsibility on the farm and learnt valuable lessons that stand him in his stead to this day.

"The best piece of advice I ever received was that with farming you get out what you put in." ‐ Raymon Taylor

These days The Taylor Family Produce Company has been growing vegetables for Woolworths shelves since 2006. There are five main products: iceberg lettuce, wombok (Chinese cabbage), celery, broccoli and silverbeet, and thanks to the contrasting climates of the families' two farms, they are all produced 12 months a year.

Iceberg lettuce is one of the first products that the Taylor family began growing. Starting in 1933, when they grew the salad vegetables for the American Military. It takes the farm 10 to 11 weeks to grow a full head of lettuce from seed to shelf ready size. It's then a race against the clock to hand‐harvest and pack them fresh for Woolies stores. Iceberg is a hugely popular variety of lettuce in Australia and the Taylors devote 210 acres of land to its production annually. This translates to about 1.8 million heads of lettuce.

Wombok takes a little bit longer to grow at about 11 to 12 weeks, and overall the family produces about 200,000 heads a year. Celery is the slowest grower at 20 to 24 weeks, and the farm produces 850,000 bunches a year. Broccoli, being a slightly wider plant is given 420 acres of farm land in order to produce 1,000,000 heads, whereas silverbeet is far more efficient spatially and the family churns out 850,000 bunches on only 75 acres of land.

For consumers, Raymon recommends to always look for crisp, firm and clear leaves on your leafy vegetables. Always check to see the butt (where it's been cut from the root) is not mouldy, and for silverbeet make sure the stalks have no black spots on them. All of their produce from the iceberg to the celery should be stored inside a zip sealed bag in your vegetable crisper. If you slip a paper towel in the bottom of the bag, the veg will last longer as the paper will absorb excess moisture.

Iceberg lettuce is a great complement to a burger, a salad or a sandwich. Wombok is a favourite of chefs making Korean kimchi, but it's also fantastic in Asian noodle salads and stir‐fries. Broccoli and silverbeet are both beautiful in pasta.