In this week’s episode of Awkward Ag, Patti Durand answers a letter signed by “Trying to Find Balance” who asks Patti what they can say to other farm team members who make them feel guilty about trying to find a work-life balance. Do you need some advice on how to have an awkward conversation with someone on the farm? Send your questions to astewart@farmmedia.com. (Don’t worry, we’ll keep it anonymous.)

Click on the links below to watch more videos in the Awkward Ag series:

Is your parents’ accountant the best fit for the farm?

Sharing your final wishes with family

Responding to advice, whether you wanted it or not

Managing ‘not-so-good’ vibrations

How to ask for a raise on the farm

Taking awkwardness out of farm family discussions

The post VIDEO: Trying to find work-life balance on the farm appeared first on Country Guide.

Farming presents unique challenges for achieving work-life balance. While technologies like robotic milkers and birthing cameras in the barn should ease the strain, it still feels like there is always more work that you could be doing with any time that they do free up.

Then add in the toll from unco-operative weather and equipment breakdowns, which can disrupt the best of plans, and top it all off with the pressure that comes from inheriting a culture where self-sacrifice and long hours are the expected norm.

As managing partner of a multi-generation 16,000-acre grain farm, Leguee knows his sleep suffers during the busy seasons. He has built a good team, but even with lots of help on the farm, “we all get run down,” he says.

He’s not the only one, says Beverly Beuermann-King, a resiliency and stress expert from Little Britain, Ont., who grew up on a dairy farm and says sleep issues are one of the tell-tale signs of a life that’s out of balance,

Other signs that you could benefit from a more optimal work-life balance range from relationship conflict, feeling negative and being accident prone to suffering from fatigue, substance abuse and heart disease.

If you notice any of these signs, Beuermann-King recommends evaluating your satisfaction with respect to family, career, health, personal growth, spirituality, fun, romance and community involvement.

She also suggests keeping a time log so you have an accurate idea of how you’re currently spending your time. Then, reflect on your top three priorities, your time-wasters, and what you can change so you can spend more time on your priorities. Ask yourself: What can I delegate? What can I discard?

Brainstorm a list of strategies that will help you have more harmony between what you desire and how you are currently living, Beuermann-King says. “It’s about making work-life choices,” she explains. “You could plan a date night, trade child care with other couples, take a nap after lunch, do a creative hobby, or take a walk in nature. Be intentional with your time.”

Not everyone on the farm has the same views on work-life balance, so communication is essential, adds Beuermann-King. “Younger generations, for example, are often less willing to sacrifice everything for the farm, so maybe things can be done differently now. The older generation needs to be open to change or the younger generation may not be willing to take over.”

Getting intentional

Krista Hulshof, an architect who specializes in agri-tourism and is married to a hog farmer near Stratford, Ont., has been striving to create a better work-life balance. About two years ago, this mother of three young children says she was feeling overwhelmed and burned out. She wasn’t getting enough sleep and she was easily frustrated and quick to anger.

Through an online coaching program that is geared to helping mothers manage their emotions and stress, she learned new habits. One of the most important changes she made was to take some quiet time, 10 to 30 minutes, to meditate at the end of each workday.

For Hulshof, another helpful practice has been to journal. “I sit in my car and tap out the anger. Once the emotion is spent, I have clarity and can be more logical.”

Hulshof agrees there is pressure to work long hours in agriculture as well as expectations of “what you’re supposed to do.” As a result, she makes a point of evaluating how and where she spends her time. “Do I have a garden because I want to or because it’s expected? Do I have to put in so many hours or is that an expectation?”

According to Statistics Canada, women carry more of the workload for housekeeping and child care, and a more equitable sharing of these tasks could reduce the pressure on them.

Previously, Hulshof had a house cleaner but now that her children are a little older (ages five to 10), they are all expected to pitch in, including her husband. “We should all share and not let gender role expectations get in the way,” she says.

Making a mental shift in her outlook has been important for work-life balance, continues Hulshof. “We think we can do it all but we can’t,” she says. “I’ve stopped feeling guilty about taking a night off or doing a hobby.” She and her husband now set aside Sundays for family time — except for necessary chores.

In the past, Hulshof also used a meal service. “The best part was lifting the mental load of not having to think about what to cook,” she says. “The food would be there and I would know it would take 40 minutes to prepare.” While she no longer uses the meal service, she does plan ahead for six meals at a time.

A better plan

For Stephanie Craig, owner of Tullamore Lavender farm near Arthur, Ont., a change in perspective was also a critical step in overcoming the pressure of a toxic culture that says “you can do it all.” She thinks this pressure is especially strong for millennials and women. In her opinion, a better approach is “you can do it all, but not all at once.”

When Craig’s child was born three years ago, she left a good-paying off-farm job to focus on farming and parenting, knowing that trying to do all three would prove too much. Having her child in daycare has been important for the success of the farm. She fits two phone calls into her workday breaks to maintain social ties with friends who live at a distance.

To maintain balance, Craig says she has to say “no” to a lot of things right now but figures there will be more time for volunteering when her child has grown up.

Similarly, Anna Lisa Wienecke can also foresee a time when her kids are older and it will get easier to pursue personal interests. But right now, as the full-time grain merchant and office manager at the elevator she owns with her husband near Tottenham, Ont., having the same busy period as her husband further exacerbates the struggle to maintain work-life balance.

With their rural location, she also spends a lot of time driving their teens to their various extra-curricular activities or arranging rides for them as well as managing the household and overseeing their school responsibilities.

In the meantime, buying a cottage and hiring additional office help have both been positive steps to help ease her stress, she says. “I was able to delegate some of my work, freeing myself for more family time. And going to the cottage has allowed me to step away and take a break from the busyness of my daily life.” She is also grateful for the opportunity to spend quality time with the family at their cottage.

Wienecke also implemented a few other positive strategies for better balance. These include hiring a bi-weekly house cleaning service, attending a weekly yoga class where she learned breathing techniques that help her cope with stress, and occasionally going out for lunch with her husband or a friend, which she finds gives her some social time without interfering with evening activities.

Having a supportive partner has also been key to managing the overload, says Wienecke. When the pressure of doing a good job at everything and also meeting her own expectations starts to add up, her husband reminds her that some things don’t need her immediate response.

“We have conversations about this and have made decisions together to allow a more balanced lifestyle. It is not always easy… it is something we are constantly working on,” she says.

Toughing it out?

Like Wienecke, Rumsey, Alta. grain farmer, John Kowalchuk, also emphasizes the importance of talking to family and friends when you’re struggling, something he says he learned the hard way. “It’s not about toughing it out. It’s important to recognize when you need help and to ask for it.”

It has also convinced him to make some important choices. So, for instance, work-life balance has meant limiting the size of the farm to what he can manage on his own with some extra help during the busy seasons. He needs to prioritize time for himself and his family, he says, noting “there will always be more work to do but the kids grow up fast.”

In addition, Kowalchuk has a group of farmer friends that he regularly communicates with on X (formerly Twitter) where he can open up discussions if he’s stressed because it’s too wet, too dry or he’s too tired. “It’s a great outlet so you know you’re not in it alone.”

Taking regular breaks, even during the busy season, is also critical, he says. He always makes time to coach his daughter’s ball team even though games start at 4 p.m., and he also golfs weekly in a men’s league.

In his experience, the time away from the farm pays off as it makes him a better person at work. “It rejuvenates me,” Kowalchuk says. “I come back rested and renewed and with a better perspective.”

Resources:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, book by Stephen R. Covey
• National Farm Leadership Program with Kelly Dobson
• Work-Life Balance course by Beverly Beuermann-King

The post Target: work-life balance appeared first on Country Guide.

Research shows that many people in their mid-40s grow dissatisfied with their careers. The reasons behind this mid-career “crisis” can be attributed to several factors, none of which are well understood.

For example, maybe you have regrets about the past. Maybe you feel disappointed that things didn’t go according to plan or that you failed to meet some of your original goals. Maybe you even feel a little bored with the “sameness” of every day or you’re looking for a better work-life balance.

• RELATED: Manitoba couple reinvents their farm

So, if you’re feeling like you’re right at the bottom of that mid-life nadir, should you re-set your professional goals and ­— gasp — leave the farm behind?

Pivot or persevere

“I certainly wouldn’t describe my decision — leasing out my 960-acre small grains and oilseed farm in Yellow Grass (Sask.) so I could focus on expanding my agricultural communications side job — as a crisis,” says Lorne McClinton, a freelance writer, photographer and videographer from Wolfe Island, Ont. “It simply boiled down to deciding what I wanted to do with this life.”

Like many Canadian farmers, McClinton always worked off-farm. “I always had my freelance photojournalism and corporate photography business to supplement farm income,” he says. “For a while I was a partner in a film and video production company, and I also taught photojournalism and photography for a decade at the University of Regina.”

Starting in 1983 he had spent 20 years constantly juggling his schedule to meet the time demands of his farm and off-farm enterprises. But after weathering yet another disaster, in this case a prairie-wide killing frost in August 2004, he says he’d had enough. “I decided it was high time I simplified my life.”

A self-described workaholic, McClinton always struggled to maintain a healthy work-life balance. “I didn’t realize how big a mess I was making of things until I had a chance conversation with my first wife in the mid-1990s,” says McClinton. “It started when I casually mentioned to her that I couldn’t recall much of our youngest son’s first years.”

• RELATED: Farmers need to find time for family

He says her response felt like he’d been doused with a cold bucket of water. “Basically, she confirmed it was true, then listed all the reasons why: I was teaching a full load at the university, working on a co-production with a Russian company on Canadian agriculture, shooting a book on the RCMP, and still taking on photography assignments. She added that whenever I did make it home, I jumped into the tractor or combine and headed out to the fields. She ended by saying that no wonder I don’t remember those years; I was never there.”

And so, he took stock of his life and decided to sell his share of the production company to his partners in 1994 and left the university in 1995 to concentrate solely on farming and ag communications.

McClinton says that leaving academia was a major career decision. To calm his and his former wife’s fears, he developed a business plan for a business-to-business agricultural communications company. He wanted to focus on selling his writing and photography skills to high-paying clients such as advertising agencies, corporations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and government agencies. “It allowed me to combine my three great passions — writing, photography and farming — without sacrificing our financial security,” he says.

He felt like he was on to something as soon as he started researching. “I knew it had tremendous potential,” says McClinton. “My farming background had given me a lot of inherent knowledge about the industry, and I was well-known as a photographer and to a lesser extent, a writer. I started knocking on doors and my business exploded.”

Finding the re-set button

The original plan was for his wife to manage the day-to-day grain operations now that the children were in school and he would focus on building the off-farm business. But it had mixed success. “My off-farm business thrived. I was soon travelling all over the Prairies taking photographs and writing for a ‘who’s who’ of Canadian agriculture ad agencies, corporations, non-profits and publications,” McClinton says. “However, our marriage disintegrated during the process. After our divorce, my ex-wife remarried a helicopter mechanic in the armed forces and the children moved with her across the country to an airbase at Goose Bay, Labrador. It was not a happy time for me.”

Through all the turmoil, however, his communications business thrived but “it demanded an increasing amount of my time,” reflects McClinton. “It eventually got to the point where no matter what I was doing, I ought to have been doing something else. Once more I was burning the candle at both ends except that now I was in my early 40s and not nearly as enamoured with the 60+ hour work week.” He started dating a television and live entertainment producer in Montreal, Que., who eventually became his second wife in 2002. “I knew that my work habits had already led to one divorce and cratered the short-lived common-law relationship that followed it. I was determined not to let history repeat itself,” he says.

Something had to give.

But with two children rapidly approaching university age, McClinton needed to increase his income to help pay for their studies. “I asked myself: What’s the best way to do that?”

“The answer looked simple when I dispassionately looked at the numbers,” he recalls. “I could lease out my farmland without incurring much of a financial penalty and still retain the ability to capture any potential capital gains in farmland values. I determined I could more than offset any annual income discrepancy by taking on the communications assignments I was passing up due to time constraints. And it became a no-brainer decision when John Deere recruited me to be the Canadian field editor for their Furrow, Le Sillon, and Homestead publications.”

McClinton started to lease his farm in 2005, allowing time to pursue his other passions and goals. He says it was without a doubt the best decision. “First, it allowed me to more easily retain a close relationship with my sons as they grew up on the other side of the continent from my farm,” he says. “And traveling with me across Canada, and occasionally internationally, gave them experiences they would not have had if I had continued to farm. It also allowed me the opportunity to be a hopefully much better husband to my second wife and I think a pretty good stepfather to her children, too. Finally, it’s given me a great second career that I truly enjoy.”

Was it an easy decision to rent the farm and pursue a second career? McClinton answers with an emphatic “no.”

“I agonized over it for at least a year,” he says. “But once I made that decision, the stress of everything lifted off my shoulders. I knew it was the right decision for me.”

The mid-life — mid-career nadir

Mountains of research point to what many of us already know: middle age vies for first place with those awkward teenage years as the most difficult time of your life.

Throw in the fact that mid-life often coincides with mid-career, and we might start to question the purpose of, or our satisfaction with, one of the biggest elements to which we attach our identity: our profession.

Which prompts many of us to ask the question MIT philosophy professor Kieran Setiya asked in his HBR article ‘Facing Your Mid-Career Crisis’: “How can doing what is worthwhile seem empty?”

Setiya’s suggestion that a mid-career crisis might be because “too much of our time is spent putting out fires and avoiding bad results, instead of pursuing projects with existential value — the kind that makes life worth living…” might resonate with many farmers. “Satisfaction,” he says, “is always in the future or the past; no wonder the present feels empty.”

If the idea of doing more of the same, day in and day out for the next several decades, makes you cringe, maybe a mid-career re-set is in order.

Anyway, being too old to start over is so last century. Given that the average life expectancy of a Canadian is 81.3 years (2022 Statistics Canada), there’s a big chunk of time before and after mid-life.

Some questions to ask yourself if you’re considering a mid-career re-set are:

• Do my professional goals still align with my personal values, interests, goals?
• Do I feel a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment with my work?
• Do I see myself on this path for the rest of my career/life?

It can also be helpful to consult a career coach. You can check out the Career Professionals of Canada website at careerprocanada.ca to search the directory for qualified career coach professionals specializing in various areas of career development. You can also search “career coach + (your region)” on Google or type “career coach” into your LinkedIn account search bar to find someone close to you.

While the term “mid-life crisis” has been around since 1965 when it was coined by psychoanalyst Elliot Jacques, economist Hannes Schwandt, avoids the term. “’Crisis’ is really this idea that it’s a dramatic thing that has to stop immediately, it has to be short and we have to get rid of it,” he says in The Atlantic podcast. “If you would tell your teenagers who are going through puberty that this is (a crisis) that would certainly not be helpful… to the same extent, it might not be helpful to tell people in their mid-life nadir… that it’s a crisis.”

Schwandt concludes optimistically: “(T)he really fascinating thing is that this mid-life dissatisfaction is often really unrelated to successes or lack of successes in different domains of life. It just seems to be something much more general and something that is maybe more related to biology. It might be something more like a second puberty rather than just something that is driven by people’s specific circumstances… this phenomenon of mid-life dissatisfaction is not something exceptional. It’s not something that is happening as a personal crisis. It might be just a normal developmental stage.”

– This article was originally published in the March 2024 issue of Country Guide.

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