If you're a fruit farmer and you're tired of getting low prices for your produce, why not turn it into alcohol?

That's what one south-east Queensland citrus-farmer-turned-booze-baron did, and he's never looked back.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 5 minutes 57 seconds 5 m Michael Ward talks about distilling fruits and native plants ( Marty McCarthy ) Download 2.7 MB

Michael Ward, with the help of his Russian wife Alla, now produces vodkas and liquors using fruits and native Australian plants.

"The supermarkets, the way they lorded over the little farmer-grower, I thought 'I don't need this'. I tell them to get stuffed and they tell me where to go," he said.

"So we proceeded to teach ourselves how to use the beautiful fruit to ferment it and make all sorts of wonderful schnapps and liquors with it.

"What we have done is diversified. You've just got to get smarter and think outside the square."

Mr Ward says the new business model took a lot of work in the early days, but was worth it.

"The craft brewer is becoming more prolific and you need a lot of money to set it all up and start, along with government licences," he said.

"It's not rocket science.

"People often say to me 'how have you done so well so quickly?' and I genuinely think it's because we don't have the smarts to muck it up."