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General News

18 April, 2020

Builder finds niche in crisis

When Cameron Haigh found work drying up from his day job of building sheds, he decided to make the most of the spare time and materials he had at home

By Phil Brandel

Builder finds niche in crisis - feature photo

When Cameron Haigh found work drying up from his day job of building sheds, he decided to make the most of the spare time and materials he had at home to build a couple of garden beds.

The first garden beds were posted on-line and sold out quickly. Cameron's wife Jo estimates that her husband has built over 70 garden beds in the last month alone.

“When the first garden got sold, people just kept asking him to build more,” she said.

“He has been flat chat since we sold the first beds online.”

Around two weeks ago Jo and Cameron decided to take the next step in their hobby and “Cam's Garden Beds and Backyard Things” was launched as an official business.

“The garden beds are made from the same materials that he used to make sheds from,” Jo said

Cameron has also started building small market and roadside stalls for local farmers.

“We made our own roadside stall for people to take some free passionfruit that we had laying about”

“We put the call out on Facebook to see if any of our neighbours wanted to contribute and some people added chokos, lemons, limes, bananas, eggplants and custard apples, and from that, we have sold a couple of the fruit stalls as well.”

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One of Cameron's roadside stalls with the free community pantry.

Jo is currently on maternity leave and said the garden bed business has saved them during the current crisis, “We have three small children and with me being on maternity leave our income is significantly reduced,” Jo said

“Then Cameron wasn’t getting any work building sheds, so this new business has been very handy for us to have this extra income coming in at this time”

Jo hopes that Cam's Garden Beds and Backyard Things is going to be a long term project.

“Cameron has a few other ideas of things that he can build and make, so we hope this really takes off”

A standard size garden bed (1400 x 1100) sells for $150 each or two for $280.

Go to https://www.facebook.com/camsgardenbeds/ for more information

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