Annemarie Kroon was an investment analyst in Cape Town when she fell in love with a Karoo farmer, and married him during the worst drought in living history. The veld was as brown as her husband’s khaki shorts.

She was still writing wedding thank-you letters when she thought, "What have I done?"

Back then, sixteen years ago, she had no idea that she would soon be setting trends and standards, and that her lavender business would become international.

All she knew, as fine Karoo dust settled on her desk, was that she had to find something to do. "I had to have something to be passionate about," she says. "I couldn’t sit in the farmhouse all day, waiting for the sound of the bakkie coming home."

She waited six years for the perfect solution. In addition to igniting passion, the new business had to fulfil four other crucial requirements: it had to suit the Karoo environment; it had to be grown locally and dried because of the Karoo’s distance from any marketplace; it had to be waterwise; and it had to be something the Kroon’s children could do with their mother. "I am a passionate mommy first," says Annemarie, "so any business had to allow me that priority." The new business also had to be labour intensive as the farm is home to 10 families, almost all of them had only one family member employed.