Dig This: Selling Dirt

We’ve spent our working lives working dirty jobs (current gig excepted, of course). But in all that time, we never thought of this. Maybe it was just too obvious: selling dirt!

Two Irish guys came up with it a couple years ago. Now they’re raking in millions.

Of course, the dirt they sell is not just any dirt. It’s Official Irish Dirt, a piece of the old country.

Pat Burke and Alan Jenkins started their company, Auld Sod Export Co., two years ago. Now they import tons of Irish soil to America through their warehouse in Speonk, New York. It's $20 for a package of four 240-gram bags, with a few shamrock seeds on the side.

What do you do with Irish dirt? Most customers bring it to the funerals of Irish people and scatter it over the coffin.

But there are lots of other things you can do with it. One Irish-American dropped $148,000 on 7 tons to spread under a house he was building. People in China buy it because they think it’s lucky.

To keep up with demand, Auld Sod Export digs its raw material from a 2-acre field in Tipperary. It has a staff of 10 people and to date it's sold millions of dollars' worth of dirt.

Now we know why they call it the Emerald Isle. It's worth its weight in gold.

(Although, to be fair, we should mention that Auld Irish Soil gives 80 percent of its profits to charities in Ireland.)