Grass is greener for company with major league clout: Graff's Turf Farm in Fort Morgan finds niche with sports stadiums.

• Author: O'Meara, Carol
• Position: ATTITUDE at ALTITUDE

SEVENTY MILES NORTHEAST OF DENVER on the banks of the South Platte River, a farm is turning sand into gold. Fort Morgan-based Graff's Turf Farm has what it lakes for the major leagues, and is one of four growers in the nation keeping the pros in green.

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"My parents. Randy and Betsy, started this sod farm with 120 acres in 1979," said James Graff, who, with longtime production manager Marty Thiels, bought the company in 2007. Normally selling 123 to 150 acres of sod per year, at 440 acres Graff's is a mid-to-large size turf farm for Colorado.

"Something that helps us is that we have a lot of specialty turf. We don't just grow fields and fields of bluegrass and fescue," Graff said. "We grow buffalo grass, bentgrass for putting greens and some very high-end grasses."

Originally customers were landscapes, contractors and homeowners, but in the mid-1990s the company moved into sports turf, which now comprises 30 percent of its business.

"In the early '90s things shifted; we realized we grew high enough quality that we could use our turf in sports," Graff said. At that time, there was a different set of standards coming on in the sports turf world."

That diversification included custom blends and sod cutting to accommodate the emerging high-end market. "I remember back in the late 1980s, working with Randy on resodding the University of Northern Colorado fields where the Broncos practiced," said Ross Kurcab, turf manager for the Denver Broncos. "There wasn't much of a market back then for sports turf and what we need, for how short we cut it and how that affects it."

As sophistication of playing surfaces increased, the demand for Graff's high performance grass and unique sandy soil boomed. Thin cut sod--grass with a sliver of roots and soil--was the standard, but repairing professional fields with it was problematic for playability in a short time frame.

"Graff's embraced thick-cut sod in wide rolls, which can be played upon almost immediately," said Kurcab, a 26-year veteran of turf management in the NFL. "They were the first to jump on big rolls. As a result their business blew up big. Everybody in the industry knows them."

Early big league contracts included covering Chicago's Soldier Field for the World Cup in 1994 and the Kansas City Royals' Kauffman Field in 1997. From there, the farm has carpeted soccer, baseball, football and rugby fields around the country. But Kurcab stressed that this quality turf is not something...