What if it was suddenly game over? What if you had to stop producing whatever it is you grow or raise on your land?

Drive around Norfolk County, located on the north shore of Lake Erie, and you’ll still see tobacco fields. A couple of hundred people, virtually all new entrants using machinery and facilities purchased from or loaned by family, still grow the crop.

Tobacco’s demise not only hit farmers in the pocketbook but also threatened the fragile ecosystem of the productive, but highly erodible soil of the Norfolk sand plain.

Norfolk is not a place where you’d necessarily expect to find a hotbed of innovative entrepreneurship. Not only did a single crop dominate the area but growers, save those on the marketing board, had no hand in selling it.

Purple Daze Lavender Farm is an oasis of calm compared to that of Jason Ryder, a young neighbour who farms just south of Delhi, a few kilometers to the east.

When Frank DeLeebeeck went searching for Plan B, the first answer he came up with was sweet potatoes. It was not the right answer. Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, DeLeebeeck began growing tobacco in 1977, enjoyed many good years, and believed “tobacco was always going to be here,” even though the signs increasingly pointed the other way.