“Set the rules early about how often you’ll get in touch and when you’ll wrap things up.”
— Jen Denys
Pat Dahlman had a problem and she just couldn’t be sure she knew how best to solve it. The Sundre, Alta. rancher had only one water source but she was running several paddocks and she was determined to manage them in a more sustainable way.
What, she needed to know, would be the most practical, most sustainable and most cost-efficient way of getting that water where it needed to go?
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Enter Jim Stone, a retired farmer from nearby Olds. Stone has been a mentor in one way or another for years. Most recently, he has been working
with Alberta producers in the National Sustainable Grazing Mentorship program.
Together, Stone and Dahlman came up with a solution for her water dilemma. Next, they also tackled a couple of other ongoing issues on Dahlman’s farm and resolved them together too.
It’s an example of mentoring the way it’s meant to work. But it didn’t happen on its own.
Dahlman says the key to their successful partnership was that she knew exactly what her goal was, even before Stone set foot on the farm.
By the time Stone arrived for their first visit, Dahlman had a rough sense of what she could spend and what ideas she thought were worth considering. The two then spent the morning at the kitchen table, poring over her notes and plans.
“You have to knock these ideas around in your own head,” Dahlman says, “so you’re not one minute saying, ‘I was thinking about doing this’ or ‘I could maybe do that’.”
Stone says the second ingredient to getting the most out of a mentorship is asking a lot of questions, and then listening.
“It could take you the best part of the morning at the kitchen table to get to that position, where you understand them and they feel like they can trust you,” Stone says.
Likewise, Stone says it’s important for the mentee to keep an open mind. In this case, Dahlman says she had spent years thinking about her problem from different angles, and she was open to Stone’s ideas.
“If you want something, you yourself have to be open to ideas,” Dahlman says. “If you’re going in with that idea that, ‘You know, this has always worked for me. Why would I want to try that?’ well, don’t try it. Do what you’ve been doing all the time but don’t come crying.”
In Dahlman’s case, being open to alternatives saved her time and a lot of money. She thought she would have to run a water line under a laneway to reach the west side, but Stone suggested an alternative to avoid that.
This leads to the next point: it’s important in an agriculture mentorship to connect on the farm — not over the phone or e-mail. The pair may never have come up with the idea had Stone not seen the farm and been able to analyze her situation.
“We walked and took the quad to see what would be best,” Dahlman says. “Should we go along the fence line, or should we go diagonally? Where would be the most strategic place to put the waterer, the trough? Things like that.”
Melissa Dumont says the merits of being on-site can’t be emphasized enough. Dumont runs the Step Up mentorship program with the Canadian Farm Business Management Council (www.farmcentre.com).
Step Up is an on-farm paid work placement that matches experienced farm managers with young people just starting their farming careers. Mentees travel across the country and spend a minimum of eight weeks on their mentor’s farm.
Dumont says being away from home and being intimately involved in the mentor’s operation gives the mentees access to aspects of farming they might not otherwise be exposed to.
“If the farmer is going out to buy a new tractor, and there’s wheeling and dealing going on, we want the mentee to be there,” Dumont says. “We
