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TOBACCO TO TARRAGON
By Tom Benner
Herb Conference – St. John’sNewfoundland
Only three short years ago we were in a totally different type of farming and had been for many years. In order to help you understand this transition, we should go back to the very beginning of our long journey from Tobacco to Tarragon.
The year is 1927 and my grandfather, Ward Benner has returned to Ontario after a few years of homesteading some land in the Peace River District of Alberta with his brothers. He puts a down payment on a 200 acre parcel of land in BayhamTownship. The farm holds a large amount of high quality timber ready to be harvested and sold. Grandfather plans on paying off a significant portion of his mortgage with the proceeds.
Over the next year or so the timber is cut, sawn into boards and air-dried. It is then loaded onto rail cars and sent off to a furniture factory in Toronto. Unfortunately, this coincides with the stock market crash and resulting Great Depression in the fall of 1929. After the lumber sits, deteriorating on a siding for months, my grandfather makes the trip to Toronto, cuts it all up for firewood and sells it for whatever he can get. Grandad now has to come up with a new plan or the future of his farm could be in jeopardy.
Due to the sandy and dry nature of the area’s soil, traditional mixed crop and livestock farming was a marginal proposition at least. Then he learns of an exciting new crop being grown in the nearby counties of the Norfolk Sand Plains. Some seed is purchased, transplants are grown in open air muck beds alongside the field and in the Spring of 1931 he plants his first few acres of flue-cured Virginia tobacco.
Over the following decades, tobacco leaf will become the single most valuable agricultural commodity in Ontario. Tobacco farms number in the thousands, contributing ten’s of millions of dollars annually to the local economy and government coffers. Federal and provincial politicians applaud the formation of the OFCTGMB and they help to secure funding for a large and well-equipped tobacco production research station in Delhi. Previously under-funded municipal councils see their tax base increase almost exponentially - roads are paved, new schools and hospitals built – all is well!
Now, fast forward 50 years later to 1981. Grandfather has been gone for a while and my father, Murray, is running the farm. I am married with a two year old daughter and taking an engineering course at a local college. My dad is finding it more and more difficult to manage the operation all by himself, so we agree that it is time for me to come back to the farm. The next few years were very busy for my wife and I. We gradually assumed the tobacco business as well as duties and responsibilities of operating the farm, growing some alternative crops, such as soybeans, kidney beans and alfalfa. However, we still find time to have a couple more kids.
Through the 1990’s it was pretty well business as usual, however the tobacco industry started to come under pressure. As the health risks associated with smoking became increasingly apparent and better understood, government support faded, taxation increased and tobacco growers crop sizes declined. By 2002 my wife and I had decided there was no future left for us in tobacco farming – the writing was on the wall and it was time to move on – but to what?
We were quite reluctant to abandon a third-generation family enterprise of over 70 years. I am sure people here in Simcoe can understand that. We had a big investment in specialized equipment and buildings that might not be usable for anything else. But we started looking. Processing and sweet potatoes were considered, garlic was a strong candidate. Getting some retraining or a factory job was a possibility. However, we really didn’t want to leave farming. There is nothing else like it.
Then one day in the early summer of 2002, Deb was surfing the net when she came upon an herb business for sale. The vendors had bought the wholesale potted and fresh-cut culinary herb business from the original owner about 4 years previously. They found the combined operation too involved to be run efficiently and desired to sell off the potted herb portion of the company. We were very surprised to find out they were located less than 10 miles from our farm. Small world, eh?
After some real soul-searching, a couple of visits to their farm and several weeks of negotiations, we became the proud owners of a potted culinary herb growing business.
Now, my wife is a Master Gardener and she had some experience with herbs as one of her friends owns an herbal-based personal care products company. However, I knew the learning curve for me would be pretty steep as the only knowledge I had of herbs came from sprinkling the contents of that little package of green stuff onto a do-it-yourself pizza!
Our new venture, in the beginning, was comprised of an assortment of herb seeds and plant tags, a variety of stock plants for cuttings, a dozen old bedding plant carts, some left-over pots and, most importantly, the wholesale customer list. A lot of people will tell you that growing stuff can sometimes be a lot less difficult than finding a market for your product. Having a customer base already in place was a real advantage for us. Now, the pressure was on to produce a quality product that would satisfy our customers.
The first step was to convert our greenhouses. We were fortunate to have 3 existing houses – one a fairly new double poly hoop style and two older, wooden A-frames. The muck was taken out with a skid-steer and ground cover laid down. A propane-fired unit heater and some HAF fans were installed in each greenhouse. We had also gotten some old wooden benches as part of the deal so these were brought in, put on cement blocks and we were ready to grow.
That first season was a real eye-opener. Among other things, trying to get rosemary cuttings to root with some kind of regularity, waiting and wondering if the English Lavender was ever going to come up and gazing with dismay at our first herd of fungus gnats. There were many sleepless nights wondering if we had done the right thing and many hours spent pouring over herb books, looking for answers to the many questions we had. Relying on the support and encouragement of our family and friends became a very important part of our lives.
In another instance, we were fortunate to get the account for a small chain of retail garden centres whose sales represented, at least to us, a large amount. They had placed a fairly large order early in the spring and it was the first to go out the door. I had backed up to their shipping dock and was unloading trays of herbs at a steady pace, thinking “Yeah! We’re in business!!” when the big boss happened to walk by. He stopped and said – ‘you must be the new herb supplier’ – (yep). He then took a tray from me and pointed at the corner – ‘what’s this?’ he asked. Well, that’s a plant tag, I said. ‘Okay,’ he replies, ‘what if I do this’ and he plucks the tag out of the pot. It slowly dawned on me that in a tray of 18 – 4 inch pots we had put only one tag and when it was gone, some customers might not have any idea what kind of plants they were looking at.
‘You’d better get that fixed up,’ he said, smiled and continued on his way. So, after I got back from deliveries we had to hop in the car with all the necessary tags, drive back to Toronto (which is about 1 and a half hours from our farm) and label every pot in the whole order, which is the way it should have been done in the first place. Live and learn.
And speaking of learning, because there are absolutely zero synthetic pesticides registered for use on herbs in Canada, our experience has also included a crash course in Biological Pest Control. I won’t soon forget my conversation with the entomologist at a greenhouse supply company. I said to her “now let me get this straight….you want me to pay money to buy a container of bugs to put in my greenhouse?????” “Yes”, was her reply. “Wow!!” said I. Anyway, it is quite amazing to observe a variety of beneficial insects cleaning up on such pests as aphids, white fly, thrips and those good old fungus gnats. At a time when some modern agricultural practices have been found to be counter-productive, IPM is an example of what can be achieved when we work with the natural world to find solutions.
Although there were some set-backs and a lot of unfamiliar things to deal with, we considered our first year a relative success. We had increased sales volumes from previous levels, gotten new customers and been told that our herbs were of good quality. We also realized that if we were to continue to grow our business, our facilities had to be improved. Another hoop style greenhouse was constructed alongside the first and a potting shed built to connect them across the end. The building has energy-efficient in floor heating, a small loading dock and enough room for seeding, transplanting and shipping. It also contains a pot-filling machine – nothing fancy – but sure beats filling them in a corner of the greenhouse with a dustpan!
At some point during that first season, I had innocently remarked to my wife that we should have a retail store for the herbs to capture some of that market. Well, she certainly took that one to heart.
During the second year we converted the old bunkhouse, where our offshore workers lived while they were working here, into a nice little farm gate shop, complete with a wrap-around porch and some benches for herbs in season.
The store stocks a real variety of items, including Fair Trade organic coffee and tea, From the Meadow herbal personal care products, hand-crafted tea sets and Heritage Line herbal teas, dried herb seasoning blends, vinegars, oils, mustards and jellies. You might be interesting in visiting our website at for more information.
We also put up another greenhouse last year. It is a three-bay gutter connect structure attached to the potting shed with a walkway which allowed us to move between greenhouses without having to go outside. The first couple of years had been spent moving tray if plants from greenhouse to greenhouse in all kinds of weather.
This season, our third, saw continued growth of sales both wholesale and retail. We are expanding our themed herb gardens and holding herb-related events on the farm throughout the season, such as ‘Planning an Herb Garden’ ‘Cooking with Herbs’ and “In the Pink”, a wellness fair with over 25 health related vendors. Plans for the future include pick your own lavender and wildflower gardens and a Garden Café.
Last fall we installed a biomass greenhouse heating system – converting to burning corn instead of propane. Hopefully our heating expenses will go down.
In conclusion, I would like to say that a mid-life career change can present many challenges, but it is do-able. Going off in a totally different direction has broadened our horizons and renewed our children’s interest in the family farm. I also know that we could not have come this far without the unwavering support of our family and friends.
These past three years I have had the privilege of meeting many really fine people in the Herb industry and the government. Their commitment is inspiring and their knowledge irreplaceable. I feel fortunate in having the opportunity to be involved with growing herbs. They are wonderfully intriguing and useful plants – their potential is enormous.