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Better Farming
December 2016
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STEVE & ANITA
BUEHNER
The reinvention of a tobacco farm
D
isappointing barely begins to
describe the 2008 tobacco
crop on the rolling hills of
Anita and Steve Buehner’s 180-acre
farm near Waterford in Norfolk
County. The crop was tiny, its quality
poor. “When that crop was done, I
was done,” Steve Buehner says, as he
and Anita recall the now long-ago
season during an interview that takes
place on the patio outside the farm’s
former barn.
Ever since they bought the farm
from Anita’s parents in 1990 the
Buehners had grown tobacco; the
farm had been in tobacco for decades
before that, and the crop had been a
steady presence in both Anita’s and
Steve’s lives growing up.
But public attitudes and govern-
ment policies were changing. By
2008, Anita was already working
off-farm for the first time in her life,
employed at a Simcoe auto parts
plant. There was nothing the couple
wanted more than to work with each
other again on the farm. To do so,
“we had to reinvent ourselves,” says
Steve.
Years earlier, they’d planted
lavender as a trial and wondered if
establishing large-scale production of
the crop was the answer. Attendance
at a Washington State conference
during the fall of 2008 revealed
another possibility: value-added
niche agritourism. “That made much
more sense to us,” Anita says.
They decided to grow cold-hardy
wine grapes too, having also recently
joined a local group intent on
establishing grape and wine produc-
tion in the region.
Anita returned to the farm full-
time in 2009, and the next year the
couple worked feverishly to install
the trellises for the first eight acres of
grape vines. Under the ALUS (Alter-
native Land Use Services) program
they introduced a wetland in the
lowest spot on the farm to accompa-
ny the long corridors of prairie
grasses they had added on either side
by MARY BAXTER
The Buehners grew their last tobacco crop in 2008. By then, the resourceful
couple had found two new crops to grow and began their transition.
Anita and Steve Buehner