Laying The Farm-Dation

Fancy building your very own farm? Hay Dairies’ LEON HAY and Marine Life Aquaculture’s FRANK TAN may head successful local farming businesses, but they’re no strangers to manual labour, including building the farms that they work at.

- Jasmine Teo & Yip Jieying

8 DAYS: How did you come to join your family business?

LEON HAY: It was never really an official decision. My father never once asked me to take over his business. That’s just how he is. I’ve been working on the farm since I was 21, when I was in polytechnic. I even helped hammer some of the timber when we built our farm. After graduating from poly, I studied for a private accountancy degree from RMIT, and worked as an accountant at a shipping company for over a year. But I didn’t like wearing a suit and tie. I came back to help my father ’cos [I value] tradition. There aren’t a lot of Mr Hays left in the world now (laughs). A lot of youngsters don’t want this job. To them, working life is about wearing a nice Armani suit and pushing pens in an office. I won’t insist that my two daughters — they are 12 and nine — work here, but we’ll see if they are interested.

What’s a typical day of work like for you?