Do your best, hire the rest
Know what skills you can hire from others, recommends Don Daigle, vegetable grower from Moncton, N.B. who also serves as CFBMC chair.
Surround yourself with the best people you can find, Daigle says. Continually build and maintain a professional network. You never know who might know something that might help.
Knowing someone who understands the bureaucratic ropes, for instance, is invaluable when starting a new venture. Just to know who to speak with or what government department to deal with can make the difference between having the right certification or not being able to operate.
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Think through the list of skills that are needed to keep your farm moving forward, and then decide which skills you can access from others. This will leave you with a much more realistic list of skills that you need to acquire for yourself.
Building a network of suppliers, fellow farmers and professionals is essential to running a successful business. It helps in the sharing of information and in spreading the workload. I m farming but I still want a life, Daigle says.
Be open to change
Change is inevitable, and it s a farmer s ability to adapt to those changes that spells success. Those changes may be mechanical, as in the adoption of new iron, but they may also be in production management, such as adopting multi-species or rotational grazing, or, perhaps most importantly, changes in farm or financial management.
It likely means not doing things like your granddad did, an idea that s easy to commit to in theory but not always in practice, especially on multi-generational farms.
Daigle credits the lessons that he has learned and continues to learn from other farmers for a large part of his nearly 30 years of successful farming.
Like his father before him, Daigle has also told his kids that he doesn t want them to decide to take on the farm until they ve seen a bit of their country and the world. Daigle says he s travelled and continues to travel whether it s a few hours or a few provinces. I tell my kids to go see what is possible, to learn from others, to see some of this great country. I don t want them to settle here and in 10 years tell me they re miserable and want to leave. CG
