GREED vs FAIR FAMILY PRICE

“I am leaving the farm business. I can’t take the indecision anymore. I was hoping for a fair ‘family’ price for buying out my Dad, but he wants ‘fair market value’”.  A long pause on the phone line, I as the coach am letting the silence do the heavy lifting (Susan...

GET READY TO BE A GREAT FARMER

Will the farm be profitable for the next 30 years? The outstanding young farmers that I meet in my travels provide great stories and hope for agriculture’s future.  This month I’ll be meeting with a group of young dairy farmers in the Okanagan as a followup to a...

Managing your Marriage in the Muck

As I write this on September 3rd, we are stalled with a large harvest due to bothersome rains. Those of you with more muck than crop are saying “wish I even had a harvest.” And the farmer from Margo Saskatchewan with 12,000 unseeded acres is wondering how to get the...

What do you want and what does the next generation want?

Making better choices for the farm doesn’t have to be complicated. A young farmer sends a distress-filled email at 2 am.  He calls for help to try and figure out whether he should chuck his dream of farming and find another life.  His father has just demanded...

Reluctant Farmer

The Reluctant Farmer I was picking up a book at my library in May when the librarian confessed that she couldn’t find garden seeds and that was okay since she preferred reading anyway, and dubbed herself “the reluctant gardener”. I smiled knowingly as I could see in...