The trust-building work done during calm days can help a farm team create a strong and united front, ensuring that when the inevitable challenges arise, we are ready to face them together.
Tag Archives farm succession
Prepare your farm family for the storm before it happens
Farm Family Coach: Look for ways to strengthen resilience in peaceful times
Mastering communication is a work in perpetual progress
Farm Family Coach: The farming environment can be rich with opportunity for skill development
While it can get lost in the day-to-day, communication between farm family members can come with high stakes. Errors in family relations could be just as costly as running a sprayer boom into a power pole.
Consider new ideas on the farm with a learner mindset
Farm Family Coach: It’s still wise, though, to seek mentors’ wisdom rather than have to relive past mistakes
When people want some influence and agency to try something new, and are faced with “This is the way the grandparents always did it,” enthusiasm and creativity can be dampened.
Helping hands on the ranch
A Little Bit Western: Many examples around the ranch and community show the kids are all right
At Lonesome Dove Ranch in Saskatchewan, there are many examples around the ranch and community which show the kids are all right.
Mother in the middle
Farm Family Coach: This Mother’s Day, work to communicate with each other, not through Mom as an intermediary
When two family members are unable to have effective communication, they often turn to someone else to hear them out. Many times, alas, this is Mom.
Common pitfalls in farm finances
Farm Family Coach: Active management in some key areas can reduce unnecessary struggles for your farm
Consider how cash management, diversification, risk management and investments could reduce unnecessary struggles faced by your farm.
Farmers’ sons have no interest in taking over family farm
Farm Financial Planner: A tax-light liquidation of a farm calls for some planning well in advance
Jack and Mary need to retire, but a sale of their farm will the only way to get there because their grown children have no interest in farming. A tax-light liquidation of a farm, though, will take some planning well in advance.
Adapt to change with the power of grief
Farm Family Coach: Major changes — even the ones we know are for the better — will come with a surge of negative emotions
When a person goes through a major change in life, they experience a downward trend of negative emotions — often expressed as anger or sadness — before they can fully accept that change.
Grandma, stop hurting your family’s farm transition
Seeds of Encouragement: Hard commitment to a late spouse’s wishes may not align with what’s now happening in the business
The situation: A mom is not willing to consider that her dead husband’s wishes — which she wants to honour – may not be the best direction for the farm or the family in the current situation of 2025.
Editor’s Rant: Thanks, Elaine
Much of Elaine Froese’s life has been devoted to helping farm families communicate in healthy and productive ways
Thanks to our friend and longtime contributor Elaine Froese, whose final Seeds of Encouragement column appears in this issue. It takes a special kind of person to want to help people navigate their way through conflict.
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
