Grower Profile

​Wayne and Lisa Stephens

Wayne and Lisa Stephens have been growing and packing asparagus for nearly 30 years, at Boeill Creek in NSW. They have approximately 120 acres of asparagus across four properties in Boeill Creek and Dareton and Wayne, has become one of the region’s major growers.

The business started exporting back in the 1990’s, exporting roughly 80% of their crop to Japan, Taiwan and Singapore, leaving 20% for domestic markets. However, the business has now moved on to focusing on domestic work with the majority of their crop being sent to Sydney for the domestic market.

A second-generation farmer, Wayne takes care of the all the farm work while Lisa runs the packing shed. They have one casual worker, but employ up to 30 people in the shed to process it and around 20 in the field to cut asparagus when in full season, which is August - September.

A builder by trade has taught Wayne to work hard and also to use his skills to expand the business by building larger packing sheds and designing and constructing specialised equipment to be used in the packing shed.

“We honestly couldn’t think of anything else we would rather be doing. We love it. There’s no better feeling than seeing the pallets going out containing a high quality product that customers will buy. We have people coming to the packing shed praising what we grow - that’s the sort of stuff that keeps driving us to provide the best we possibly we can. Boeill Creek is our patch of paradise and we love living here. Our lifestyle means we work very hard but also enjoy our life and travel whenever we can. We get the best of both worlds.

When we eat asparagus Lisa cooks it very little, pretty much only for 2 minutes, then drains it and tosses it in some cracked pepper and pink river salt with a splash of good olive oil and it’s just beautiful”.