Reading Time: 3 minutes Temple Grandin’s Guide to Working with Farm Animals: Safe, Humane Livestock Handling Practices for the Small FarmBy Temple GrandinStorey Publishing, 192 pages What if there was a way to get inside your animals’ brains to figure out what they’re thinking and why they act in the (frustrating!) ways that they do? You can do exactly […] Read more
Temple Grandin’s Guide to Working with Farm Animals
Guide Books Review: Safe, Humane Livestock Handling Practices for the Small Farm
Great books to give as a gift for Christmas
Guide Books Review: With the season just around the corner, here are my four ideas for the farm-business reader on your list
Reading Time: 3 minutes Everything is FigureoutableBy Marie Forleo If there’s one thing farming is lousy with, it’s those “head scratchers” that stop you in your tracks until you figure things out. Forleo’s book is based on the premise that every challenge has a solution and that everything is “figureoutable.” Her approach helps you counter the thoughts that act […] Read more
The Outward Mindset
Guide Books Review: How to Change Lives and Transform Organizations
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Outward Mindset: How to Change Lives and Transform OrganizationsThe Arbinger InstituteBerrett-Koehler Publishers Do you ever think about how you think? I know it sounds flighty at first but it really is important because the way you think — whether it’s with an outward or an inward mindset — can determine the success of your […] Read more
The problem with solving problems
Bright Ideas: We all think we're great at solving problems on the farm. The truth is, it isn't so hard to get a lot better
Reading Time: 5 minutes There are right ways and wrong ways to solve problems. This is a fact. It’s real. Fortunately, though, problem-solving is a learnable skill. We can all get better at it. The Oxford dictionary defines a problem as “a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.” Meanwhile, […] Read more
Getting from good to great
Guide Books Review: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t
Reading Time: 3 minutes Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’tBy Jim CollinsHarper-Collins Most business books are written for non-farm businesses. The advice in this book, however, is generally transferable to a farm business context. After all, as I frequently explain to non-farmers who want to understand how a modern farm is run, business […] Read more
The Farm Whisperer
Guide Books Review: Secrets to Preserving Families and Perpetuating Farms
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Farm Whisperer: Secrets to Preserving Families and Perpetuating FarmsBy David Specht, with Taneil SpechtAdvising Generations LLC If you’re comfortable with whatever plan the government might have in store for your farm business in the event of your untimely death, or if you don’t care whether the farm stays in the family, of if you’re […] Read more
The gender-neutral farm
What can you do to remove gendered barriers and build a stronger, more resilient industry?
Reading Time: 7 minutes There have been a lot of conversations about women’s roles in agriculture over the past few years. You’ve read many of them in these very pages. Here’s my conversation starter: if we had gender-neutral farms in Canada, what would that even look like in practice? Would it generate more and better opportunities for women? Would […] Read more
Drop the Ball
Achieving More by Doing Less
Reading Time: 3 minutes I was going to start this column with“This one is for you, ladies!” as the main audience for the book is certainly women. But honestly, as Tiffany Dufu’s book Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less suggests, everyone could benefit by occasionally dropping that ball — especially during these harried, upsidedown times. It’s particularly […] Read more
Look beyond ag to re-imagine your farm
Bright Ideas: Where are you going to get your next great idea?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Innovation and reinvention are the cornerstones of any industry, helping them survive over the long haul. Their role is crucial in Canada’s agriculture sector. However, sometimes we rely too heavily on insider data knowledge. This approach can make us stale. It becomes repetitive, eventually costing us our originality and objectivity. So, where can our agriculture […] Read more
Making impossible conversations possible
Guide Books Review: How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide
Reading Time: 3 minutes How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical GuideBy Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay (Da Capo Lifelong Books) If you have never had a difficult conversation, you are not human. Whether it’s with parents, siblings or kids, or even with those distant family members you only see once a year, it just happens. No one […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
