The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.51: Building a Farm Cooperative to Thrive

Episode Date: May 29, 2015

Friend of the show and past guest Dan Brisebois is back to share his insights about Tourne-Sol Co-Operative Farm in Quebec. Dan was a founding member and, with his colleagues, has built a thriving farm using careful planning, great communication, and lots of hard work. Dan explains how it all started, what the farm produces, and how the farm makes decisions. He also talks about some of the benefits he has enjoyed under this model, chief among them being a great work-life balance. Dan blogs about seed production here. The book he co-wrote on crop planning, a great one, is here.    

So there's a big resilience that gets built into that. And it's something that I don't think we saw when we started the farm. But at this point we're really aware of that any one of us can be out because they're sick, or maybe they're having a baby, or maybe they just need a break and they take a week or two off. And the farm can keep running, keep running and keep running really well. That's Dan Brisbois everybody. Some of you who have been listening to the podcast since the beginning will remember Dan from the two-part series of episodes he did on on starting your own seed business as part of your farm and you'll know that he is just a really thoughtful articulate guy

and he's back he's back to talk about Ternesol Farm Cooperative, the cooperative farm business that he runs with some friends and co-workers out in Quebec. They're doing really well, and he has all kinds of great information and insights to share with all of us. So I'm really excited, and I hope you are too. So coming up on the show, we've got my long-form interview with Dan. I'm going to play a little bit of listener feedback that I received this week. And that's probably it. So let's get started.

All right. Hey, everybody. It's Jordan Maher, host of The Ruining Podcast. I'm coming at you one day late with this week's episode. I had it on track to get it out last night, and then I had some unforeseen complications, including a little bug that I've developed here, so you can probably hear my voice. So I'm a day late, but don't worry. I should be back on track next week.

I've got new interviews lined up, so things are chugging right along. Now, before we get to my interview with Dan, I want to play a little listener feedback that I received today, actually. Hey, Jordan. It's Moss calling you. Moss from Ripple Farm in the Comox Valley, Merrill Organics Growers Co-op. Stoked to hear your podcast every week. Nice job.

Just wanted to actually make a comment about your last caller. Very cool vacuum feeder idea. Really enjoyed that. And totally disagreed with so much of the Farmers for Liberty stuff. And just wanted to throw out maybe if you want to share with the listeners a couple of reasons why I disagree with some of his perspectives on government involvement in agriculture. While I do definitely agree that regulations can cripple small farms. And I also share a lot of those fears, as both you guys were talking about.

One of the things that I think is really essential is investing in young farmers to level the playing field. You know, we can't deny that, you know, economic privilege is a reality in the world. And I know for me personally, I'm not afraid to say that the reason I could get into farming is because there's some money in my family that helped me do that. And not everybody has that or parents or family members who are willing to sponsor any part of their farm operation. And let's face it here in BC, if you want to own your land, you're going to need some family support or some kind of sugar mama, sugar daddy. So I just wanted to point that out that, you know, government loans, low interest loans, no interest loans for farmers getting started is an awesome way. Just check out Quebec and

their thriving market gardener scene. And guess what they have? Low interest loans for farmers getting started. So, you know, it's not always a bad thing, and we can't always be just casting government as, you know, the bad guy. Not to say that there isn't corruption and corporate dominance over government, but sometimes there are good programs that we need to protect. Another one is a program that happens in conjunction with BC Association for Farmers' Markets. You probably see people at the market if you live in BC with food coupons, buying local produce. These are families who can't afford to buy fresh local food. And here they are every summer at the market. They brought in $20,000, those coupons, to our market last year in the Comox Valley.

So I just want to say that there are some times where government involvement is really great, can boost agriculture. It just has to be targeted in a good way. But anyways, that is my little two cents or so it's probably like 10 cents, but I always have more than two. And anyways, yeah, thanks for perpetuating dialogue. It was just interesting to have such a reaction

to your last caller. Got me all fired up in the bean patch. Okay, take care. Hope you're happy farming. Bye. All right, that was awesome. Thanks, Moss. I played that both because Moss was just really concise and thoughtful in her counter-argument

regarding the discussion I had a couple episodes back about Liberty for Farmers, an organization devoted to trying to reduce the level of government intervention in farming. That was back in the episode on, as Moss referenced, the air seeder idea. But I also wanted to share it just because it's an example of a listener using the Skype number, and that's awesome too. So this is a good chance for me to remind you. I have a Skype number at which you can leave me a voicemail. You could be like Moss, and you could just leave some feedback about the show.

Do you hear something you did like or didn't like? You can let me know. The other thing you can do is phone the number and share share an idea if you had just a few minutes to stand up in front of a crowd of farmers or gardeners and share something you're doing in your own gardening or farming context that you think they'd want to know about consider leaving a message if the message is pretty self-contained i'll just put it right up on an upcoming episode otherwise i can always call you back and actually record a little segment, and the number is 310-734-8426. So you can do that, or you can email me, editor at the ruminant.ca. If you want to leave me an idea or some feedback that way,

you can get at me on Twitter at ruminant blog, or you can just give me a text message 250-767-6636. If you want to do that. I'd love to hear from you. Okay, moving on. So before we get to Dan, one last thing I want to mention is that I started a new segment last week called ruminant do's and don'ts. And what I plan to do is just share some of the triumphs and follies of my own farming experiences here on the farm. I started with a triumph. valleys, of my own farming experiences here on the farm. I started with a Triumph. It's my use of a fanny pack. I've had some, a couple anyway, great pieces of email about that segment to the two of you who have done that. I haven't replied yet. I will. I was thrilled to get your message. I'm very serious about fanny packs and it appears that I'm not the only one.

So I'm not going to have that segment this episode, but it will be coming up again because I think it could be a fun idea. Okay, so Dan Brisebois. Dan Brisebois has been on the podcast before. He's done, he's recorded a couple episodes with me about seed production. They were pretty popular. I just, in interviewing him this time, I realized I still don't have those episodes up on this newer ruminant podcast feed. And you can expect those to come up this summer. I'll probably replay those episodes the next time I need to replay some reruns when i'm just too busy in the garden uh they were great episodes very popular but he did that way back in the first 10 episodes or so so i don't actually have them up on the feed yet but dan brisbois has been a few things to me um he's been one of the podcast's biggest encouragers. He's been very personally encouraging to me. I

know Dan a little bit through some work, volunteer work I've done with him for Canadian Organic Growers Organization. And I just think he's like a stand-up guy, really thoughtful guy, really dedicated to farming and to promoting organic farming practices. And just really very giving of his time, which is apparent in his willingness to come on the show for a third time. He's also just really sharp, very intelligent guy. And he gave me a great interview. And this time, it's all about running a cooperative farming model. In his case, it's a worker cooperative. I think it's five members in the cooperative that have been running a farm

together for years now. It's a profitable farm. They're all making a living from the farm. And they've managed to do it in a way that allows them some really great ancillary benefits. They have, from what it sounds like, some good lifestyles, a good work-life balance. And they've just figured it out. And what's really interesting about this interview is that you're going to get some very specific insights from Dan, but what really comes through, at least did come through for me when I spoke to him, is you just get this sense simply in hearing the whole interview that, you know, he and his cooperative partners have just been clearly very, very thoughtful

about how they've set up this relationship and very, very committed to making it work. And so it's almost the example that pervades the whole episode that is almost the most valuable. At least it was to me. You can decide for yourself. But I think that's all I need to say. It was just a general conversation. If any of you out there are considering getting into farming, you haven't done that yet, like out

striking out on your own, Dan makes a pretty compelling case for getting together with some like-minded people and having a cooperative. Because as you'll hear in the episode, there are a number of benefits that are rather unique to having a farm cooperative. So I hope you enjoy this and I'll touch in a little bit at the end, but that's all I got to say. Here's my conversation of benefits that are rather unique to having a farm cooperative. So I hope you enjoy this, and I'll touch in a little bit at the end, but that's all I got to say. Here's my conversation with Dan Brisbois. Okay, so folks, it is about an hour since I recorded that last bit, and it's been kind of this little niggling thing in my mind that I don't think I used the word ancillary correctly. Upon looking it up, not only did I learn that I didn't use it really correctly,

like maybe just barely, but also I mispronounced it. Ancillary, ancillary, ancillary, ancillary. Because yeah, so the thing is, I was talking about Dan talking about some of the ancillary benefits of a cooperative structure, I kind of meant that to mean just additional benefits, but really I just learned that ancillary is more like subordinate or secondary benefits. So that sort of works, but I didn't mean to imply, or for you to infer, that the benefits in question were indeed subordinate to the main one, whatever you think the main one is. Maybe it's the profit motive. Maybe it's all the friendship. Anyway, let's talk to Dan. So hi, my name is Dan Briesbois, and I'm one of the five farmers that run Ternasol Cooperative Farm.

farmers that run Turnusol Cooperative Farm. We've been running our farm since 2005, so about 10 years now, and we grow vegetables, seeds, cut flowers, and garden plants that we sell through CSA, Farmer's Market, and we have an online seed company. I guess I write about seeds and farming on my blog occasionally, at least, which is going to seed.wordpress.com. Dan Brisebois, thanks a lot for coming back onto the Ruminant Podcast. It's a pleasure to be back. Dan, I was really happy when you got in touch and let me know you'd be willing to talk about the topic of running a successful farm cooperative. I think there's a lot of people out there who are at least considering forming a cooperative as one way to run a farm business. Yeah, well, I'm thrilled to talk about it. I think it's something people dream about as one solution to their farm woes, but it's not something a lot of people actually act on, and I think it's a really great model.

And it doesn't always work out for everybody, but we've had a lot of success, so I'm very happy to talk about co-ops, and our co-ops. Okay. And our co-ops specifically. Okay, well let's start with your co-ops specifically. Maybe you could give a little bit of history or background on how it got started, how long it's been going, and kind of some of the basic mechanics of it. So we run our farm as a worker co-op, and we've run our farm that way since the beginning. So a workers' cooperative is a business structure registered with the government and sort of similar to being incorporated, but there are some differences. And so we have five people who run the co-op, and we've had these same five people from the beginning. the co-op, and we've had these same five people from the beginning.

So all of us met studying agriculture at McGill University, and kind of in the urban agriculture scene around that. We met sort of 2000 to 2003, 2004, and we worked on some of the same farms together. Some of us were roommates together. And then when it got time to start our own business, when we were at the point where we were tired of working for other people and some of us were starting to think about starting our own business, we decided to start together. And there was a piece of land that was offered to us, so we took it up and we started

farming. Now it's 10 years or so later. The first question that comes to mind is, can you just be a little more specific about the land that was offered up? Do you own the land? So currently we still rent the land. There's an organic cash crop operation just outside of Montreal that grows about 1,500 acres of organic grain. And my co-farmer, Reed, he loves to tinker and build stuff and work with machines. And the owners of this farm are renowned as tinkerers and machine builders. So he thought about going to work for them.

And when he approached them, they weren't actually looking to hire anybody at that point. They said that they had a piece of their field that they thought was too fertile for, or not too fertile, but that was pretty high fertility and was kind of wasted on organic grain. And they had a dream of lending it or renting it to young farmers so that they could start an organic vegetable operation and do something with it. And part of their interest in that is that they want more local food produced and all that stuff. But the other part is this, so it's three brothers that run this organic cash crop operation. And they all have kids, and they wanted to show their kids that you could get into farming on a smaller scale. It didn't have to be a big cash crop

operation, and there was ways for them to work in the countryside. So that's how the land came to us and we chose to act on that. And at this point, we still rent the land, though we're in the process of negotiating to possibly purchase it. When you folks, when this group of you started out and you were talking about, you all had aspirations of working for yourselves rather than working for others. Like, what were your main motivations or reasons for deciding to try out a cooperative? You know, I don't know that we even, I think that we didn't so much think about starting a cooperative. It's just that, you know, we were friends.

We had worked together on different stuff. Some of us had lived in a kind of collective slash cooperative household. So we were just used to working together. And then when we got ready to go, it just seemed like it would be fun to do it with friends. And yeah, it kind of is as simple as that. Looking back, you said that you were not only friends, but a number of you had worked together. I'm wondering if you think it's important that that working together happened first. Because I would think, and I actually know from some personal experience, that you're not going to be able to have a business relationship

with all your friends. Friendship isn't sufficient to ensure a thriving cooperative, in my opinion. Would you agree with that? Or is your experience different? I think friendship, well, I guess it really depends what the goals of the cooperative are. And if you're trying to run a profitable business that you're going to make a living off of for the next 10, 15, 20 years, friendship on its own is probably not the only thing you need. But, you know, it might be enough for a business if you have less ambitious goals, too. But I do know what you're talking about. I think working with your close friends in a business context, you learn things about them that you don't know as a friend, as just being friends.

And, you know, it's much more intimate, and it's a continuous relationship. You're seeing each other all the time, and you're just running against each other all the time. And one of the things that I think our society, or I think people in our society really lack is a true ability to work together as a team or as a co-op or otherwise. Despite doing all kinds of group work in school, you really don't learn how to work as a team. Generally, we learn how to work that one person does all the work and the other person maybe puts the layout together. And that's not really how you – it's not a good way to work as a cooperative. And that's not really how you – it's not a good way to work as a cooperative.

So I think that jumping in, you know, Friends is a good place to start, but not necessary. But it takes a lot of work to develop all this other social capital. And so having worked – having – I think to a certain extent, you know, there's five of us in this group, and all of us had had different relationships together. Fred and I, we had really become friends working on the student paper previously as co-editors of the paper, you know, so we were used to working late nights and making something happen that, you know, wasn't going to happen otherwise. And, you know, just meeting deadlines that we had to meet and and producing and um and then some of us like reed fred and myself lived together as roommates with a few other people in a household that you know shared chores we shared bills we had a cooking schedule and so we just developed some systems of how to communicate and how to work things though i must

say living in a household where you share cooking tasks is really different than running a cooperative business that's taking up all your time. I bet. So, okay, I want to go back to the beginning or you can just think knowing what you know now, you can answer it in that way.

But what are the basic steps to get going with a cooperative then? So either talk about what you did or knowing what you know now, what you would recommend to people. So like, let's assume you've got a group of friends all with similar aspirations and some experience in farming. What's next? Well, I guess the first thing to do, and this is what we did and what I would do again, is to sit down and talk about what you want and what everybody's dreams and aspirations are to make sure they are the same aspirations. And we did that.

So I guess in 2004, in the summer, that's when this conversation started to be a little bit more active. four in the summer, that's when this conversation started to be a little bit more active. And we all got together and sat down and met for a few hours one evening to talk about what we wanted to do. And one of the things that was really a clear line for us was that we wanted to run a profitable business. We weren't looking into creating a homestead or creating a commune or just doing an experiment. Most of us had worked on farms before that were running successfully. And so we kind of knew how to not do things, and we had ideas of how we should do things. And we wanted to jump in and be a farm that was successful and that we could make a living off of. And that was a consensus amongst us.

And so that was, I think that was a really good starting point. And then from there, we just got into, I guess it's research, both market research and then also equipment research and just budgeting. We got together a budget for the first year. That's actually a bit of a tricky thing because all of us did think that you could farm profitably. Just not everybody thought you could do it in year one. There was a range of ideas whether we could expect to make any money. And so our first budget was very, very conservative because we didn't expect,

or as a group, there wasn't a consensus that we could run a profitable farm. But after we had one growing year behind us, that really changed. By then we knew we could run a profitable farm. It had numbers to show it, and we were ready to get going. So yeah, so in that first fall, before the operation started, we put together a budget. We actually, some of us got vegetables together from farms that we were working at, and we went to one of the farmer's markets we thought we'd be selling at, and we did a test. We did a farmer's market stall one weekend just to see what the reception was. And we just started to talk around about running a CSA and looking for drop-offs.

And so we just did some kind of, I guess, basically made a business plan. And we also worked with a local business development agency, or through the government, the CLDs, which are in Quebec, the Centre Local de Développement. And so we worked through them to build a business plan. And I think that's what we did. And then the season began, and we started farming and selling vegetables and went from there. you know, selling vegetables and went from there. And I think that that is a really good way to start as, you know, a new group is jumping with sort of a common goal and a business plan.

What I would say we really learned over the next five years was how to build a strong, coherent vision together because something we definitely discovered in the early years is that we all had personal visions about how a farm could run and how a farm should run. And it took a while for us to articulate together what we wanted to do together. And I don't know if that's feasible to do right off the bat. I think that you might have to create something, let something evolve together to actually get to the point where you can sit down and say, this is what we're doing. Well, I mean, it does. I'm going to interject at this point. And so I'll

just, I'll just summarize what you said. I mean, you started off by, by making sure you were all on the same page in terms of your objective. Uh, and then you worked on, on your, your, your business plan at this point, it probably would be helpful to know, can you just break down how your current business plan works in terms of, like, are you all, is this a cooperative where you're all doing separate businesses on the same property? Or is this one business with different branches where ultimately you're all sharing the profits from everything going on? So we are a business that, so there's one business on the on the farm that's the co-op and it has different income streams and different uh production methods but it's all all the income comes into the into the business and then pays bills together hires employees together and then pays us out of the like our salaries out of this pool so um we do produce seed and we do produce

vegetables and those are part of the same business. They're just different sales outlets for that business. We don't have a separate seed company or a separate flower company or a separate vegetable company. Okay. So then in that case, like how do you, how does, if one of you, so, I mean, you, you kind of alluded very briefly before to the, to one great strength of a, of a co-op, which is that everyone has different strengths and then can focus on what they're good at and combined, you know, you, you, you're stronger as a group for that reason. Um, so if someone, I mean, what happens if you, you tomorrow want, think that, that the, that you guys should start some honey production,

you know, like, like how does that work? Clearly I would, I would assume that the whole group has to decide that that's, it's not a situation where you can say, Hey folks, I'm going to start producing honey. And, and, um, if we're, if it's profitable, we're going to share. If it's, if it's not, we're all going to lose a bit of money. Like, you know, how do you, how do you, how does the topic of new, new, um, new parts of the business get broached? Well, so, um, one of the, we really believe in good management and good planning. And anything that we add to the farm kind of falls into this good management and good planning. And so we don't jump into anything blindly.

But I guess I would take, I would just finish answering, I don't know if you asked that previous question, but I would just kind of follow up a little bit on getting going. Two things that we did that really changed the way we worked as a co-op is we took a nonviolent communication workshop with a trained instructor and kind of worked on our communication skills between the five of us. And then we also did a six-day holistic management workshop with Tony and Fran McQuill. And so that was, again, the five of us did the workshop all together. did the workshop all together. And so with those tools, we learned a lot about, you know,

building a good vision together, setting quality of life goals for the operation, direction goals also. And then we also learned a lot about communication and about, you know, testing our actions against these goals. So that's one skill set that we built up over the first 60 years of the business. And then another thing is right from the first fall, so 2015 was our first production year, and that fall we had a series of meetings where we sat down and we tore apart the production plan, the marketing plan, our human resources, and all that stuff, and then analyzed it, talked about what we loved and what we didn't like, and we rebuilt it.

And then we planned out the next year. And we've been doing that process every fall of taking, you know, between six and ten weeks, meeting once a week for about four or five hours and tackling a topic. And so combined with sort of the holistic management resources that we had and this planning process that we developed, we really have a place every year where we can reimagine the business to a certain extent and decide what kind of changes we want to make. So that's an important part of where we make decisions.

And now one thing that we really realized during the holistic management workshop and building our quality of life goals is that for us, having the most profitable, biggest CSA farm is not specifically our goal. Our goal is not so much about production, but it's more about being personally challenged and doing things that we want to do and discovering new production methods or just new farming techniques. And so kind of constant learning and challenging ourselves is part of our farming goals. And so we definitely have an openness towards new ventures.

And so if somebody wanted to start a honey operation on our farm want to bring in supers and um... and you know start tracking honey and so forth weed it's kind of a breath of that is an openness to do it we have a place where we can make in the fall we'll talk about it if in the consequences that might have uh... on the operation and um... and i think

with also nothing is we always start stuff small. You know, we wouldn't jump in with 100 hives. We'd jump in with two, three, four, five hives and kind of go from there. And the seed portion of our business is a good example of that. When we started our farm, we had been trained as vegetable producers, and we jumped in and we had a CSA from the first year. We had about 110 CSA members our first year, and we did two farmer's markets. And we produced, I don't know, $60,000 or $70,000 of vegetables, or sold $60,000 or $70,000 of vegetables. So that was the core of the business.

But at the same time, I had been interested in seed saving and seed production for a few years, and I had approached a few small seed companies about growing seed for them. And then the next year, that part increased a little bit. And by the third year, we were going to seed Saturdays and Sundays and had 20 or 25 varieties as part of our offering. And it just basically has been increasing since then. And now we have 200 seed varieties. We sell to a dozen different seed companies. We have an online store.

And currently, it's somewhere between 10% and 15% of our gross sales. And it's the part of the business that is expanding the quickest. Like we're seeing growth rates of between 30% and 50% every year on the seed business, where the vegetable business is growing, but at a much, much slower rate. And so I think that's an example of how we had a side project that we took time to do, but without compromising the vegetable operation. And as it grew bigger, we invested more resources in it, but also were generating more revenue off of it.

And 10 years down the line, it's a core part of our business. And we've had a similar growth with our – we sell, about 10% of our sales is also garlic, so that's something that started off more small and modest and has grown as we specialized in selling garlic. Garden plants, transplant sales in the spring is a part of our business that's currently growing at a similar rate, but it's a smaller part, but there's a big potential that we can choose to expand on or not. Okay, well, you've given me and probably the rest of the listeners a clear impression, I think, that you and your group didn't enter into this lightly.

You were and are very careful and considered in everything you do. And so the role that's played in your success seems clear. But I'd like to talk about the other really important aspect of a cooperative, which has to do with avoiding, like conflict avoidance and conflict resolution, Dan. I think that's got to be a major, major piece here. So I'm just wondering how your group avoids conflict, which I think would be ideal, but then when conflict arises, how you resolve it. Now, you've alluded to some workshops you've taken, but what does this look like on the ground? Well, so I think conflict is just natural in any kind of human relationship. And I guess I would say we avoid destructive conflict.

But when there is a – and conflict can mean a lot of different things. But when we don't have the same idea, we try to tackle it head on and resolve the problem. We try to tackle it head on and resolve the problem. What we try to avoid doing is hiding conflict and letting things simmer for a few years or 10 years to explode later on. So – and that really comes down to express what we mean, both as in the needs or the requests we're making of others, and also in what we hear other people asking from us, being able to communicate both those things. So that's kind of the starting point of it. And so the nonviolent communication workshops that we did really helped us, you know,

start to separate a lot of our language from who we are as individuals and also taking ownership for the things that we want and are asking for people, not projecting needs on other people or projecting emotions on other people, but kind of taking ownership of our own feelings. So it's kind of like a starting point, but it's something that just goes on continuously is conflict is possible at any point. And we tend to think of conflict coming from, you know, a clash of great ideas.

You know, I don't know. I want to build the greenhouse here versus let's build a greenhouse somewhere else. It's a better place. Or let's not build a greenhouse at all. Let's build a wash station. But I think a better place, or let's not build a greenhouse at all, let's build a wash station. But I think that most conflicts aren't coming at that level. A lot of conflict just comes from, you know, it's mid-August, it's 35 degrees out there, maybe 40 with the humid X, we've been working all day,

and we haven't even tackled half of the to-do list for that day, and we're not going to be able to finish stuff. And you're just feeling a little bit more explosive, and someone says something, and you go, and you kind of just ignite. And that's the kind of conflict that really isn't based on anything rational. It's just based on being human and how you feel and how you express yourself. So I think we've learned over the last 10 years to try to avoid our outbursts of that nature, but also when somebody does have an outburst of that nature, to realize

that they're just letting off steam and it's not meant personally. It's easy to say in words that. Some of it takes a little bit of uh takes a bit of time to feel it but um you know so it's just a lot of diffusing things and um so so stuff comes up you know in all kinds of meetings in all kinds of places we can we can we can find places that we don't have the same perceptive perspective um or just don't don't agree on things for whatever reason. And I guess we just, you know, I think the first thing really is to assume that a person has good intentions. And we all know each other for a long time, and we know that each of us has good intentions towards each other and towards the farm, has goodwill, and works really hard.

of us has good intentions towards each other and towards the farm, has goodwill, and works really hard. And so I think that that long-term relationship or friendship helps us maybe not take things as personally right away most of the time. And when something comes up, for us to take, to be able to either ourselves kind of step back and listen to what somebody's saying and then just try to understand what it is that they're feeling and why they're expressing themselves this way, and then kind of try to meet the person's needs. And through working that way, we've also kind of definitely have learned to see when we're acting a bit irrational

and being able to kind of use the same thing to ourself and try to take a step back and just waiting a moment and letting things diffuse. Well, I was going to say, Dan, like, I mean, in my own experiences, whether it's communications with, you know, potential co-op members or with your staff or whatever, you know, I've had success in just recognizing that it's most of the time not the greatest idea to deal with those tensions that can build in the moment, but rather to schedule time when everyone's got a clear head. but rather to schedule time when everyone's got a clear head, schedule time to sit down and talk when A, everyone's got a clear head, and B, everyone has permission in this formalized setting to talk through these things without being judged or where everyone's willing to really listen. And I think that that's a really great idea to create specific places and times where people can express themselves and work through things. But sometimes you don't have that time.

Sometimes you're trying to deal with something now and you don't always want to postpone some of that resolution. And so I think, not to say you shouldn't sometimes, but I think that with good listening and communication techniques, you can work through some of that stuff in the short term, in the shorter term. Okay. Do you mean in the moment or do you mean just over, you know, a few hours later or what are you specifically talking about? Well, in the moment. In the moment. I think too often when we're in a situation of conflict,

we tend to think about what it is that we don't like about someone's idea and how we want to do it else otherwise, and we just kind of bounce that back to the other person. And that does not help things. I think almost any time there's a conflict, if you stop and put your ideas aside and you listen to what the person said, and you just even reiterate the words that they've used to show them that you've heard them, and kind of just continue talking about what they're actually talking about without thinking about what you want, you can go a long way towards changing, well, towards first making somebody feel they're heard. And often if somebody feels they're heard, a lot of their guard is going to

go down and suddenly they can see maybe their own perspective a little bit different and see if there are any weaknesses or strengths of their idea, but also they can see that you're not out to get them. And Dan, what about specifically resentment? Like, I have to imagine that at certain times, at least in the early years, that it was easy enough for resentment to start building up, whether you ultimately dealt with it well. Well, you know, does that ever happen? Like, I'll just give you an example. I just think it is very normal for a group that's working

together. It could be very easy for one member of the group or more to look over to another member and be like, wow, we're all putting 70 hour weeks in and that person's always cutting off a couple hours early and, oh, that's not fair, that sort of thing. That must have come up at least in the early days. Did it? In some forms, it definitely has come up. And I think that we spent a lot of time tackling some um i don't know if i guess resentment's a good enough word but i think some of those resentments in the early years and um you know

we found some things um like you talked about specifically about time and scheduling um there's also money is another one that that brings up because i think time and money are the first things that will cause problems in any cooperative. And, you know, in our first year, everybody, in our first year when we started off, we kind of just assumed, and we stated this together, that everybody's time was as valuable as any other person's time. So we wouldn't have different wages, whether you were weeding carrots, working at CSA drop-off, doing bookkeeping or anything else and that's just you know kind of ideologically that made sense to us and we started off with that and we kind of stated that people

would log their hours at the end of the year we divide up profits and function of that and what became clear sometime during that year is that most people weren't logging their hours. And so we agreed that we wanted to split things fairly based on hours, but without that variable, it was impossible to do. And so that creates all types of tough conversations. And one of the outcomes of that is that in year two, we set a specific schedule that we would take during the growing season from, I guess, early April all the way through to the end of October.

And, you know, we started work at 8, finished work at 5. On harvest mornings, we'd start at 7. Each person would do a CSA drop-off during the week or market during the week, finishing at 7. On harvest mornings, we'd start at 7. Each person would do a CSA drop-off during the week or market during the week, finishing at 7.30. And then we decided that the five of us would rotate up the farmer's market. And so we created a schedule that if everybody followed the schedule, then they'd all be working the same amount. And then it'd be very easy to just divide profits up 20% for each person. And so before the system existed in the early years,

it was easy to fight about time and money because there wasn't anything to talk about specifically. Once the system came into power or into play, we still had disagreements about some things regarding time and money, but we have numbers to talk about, we can change things, and we have an agreement that we're working on. So it just makes it a lot easier to have the system evolve. Yeah, I was just going to say, it really does

as it seems to with so many aspects of these of your arrangement, it really does come down to thoughtfully crafted systems and really good communication. And I think that what... Sorry, I totally agree with what you just said. And I think that some of it is, you know, in the early years, we farmed mainly vegetables, had a less complex operation. We almost all worked the same schedules.

So it gave us time to work out some basics, and then we started to deviate and change how that works. And at this point where we're starting to look to the future and what it might mean to have new co-op members we have a lot of tools to discuss how that can be what that can be because we have these 10 years behind us of systems that we can you know work in your formalizing and modify to have new people come in getting back to more like just just avoiding conflict you know like preventing it from even happening what

your insights have been in terms of just getting along productively and avoiding conflict on a day-to-day basis with your with your your uh cooperative members yes i guess it really it's just really about talking about things in advance and if um um like this year we added mushrooms as i mentioned so we've added mushrooms and mushrooms and a sprout production to our operation. And these were things that Fred had been interested in working with and trialing. And so he sent us out an email proposal of what he was thinking about. And he also had some support documents you know of stuff where he discovered gotten the ideas and some examples of things that worked elsewhere

and um and then there was maybe a brief email exchange with a clarification and then in um on a monthly basis we do sit down and meet for half a day and um so during one of those times we talked a bit about what uh you know some of the um challenges that adding a sprout production or a mushroom production might do logistically to our business and might do um you know time wise and uh and whether we what or equipment-wise. And so there's kind of a place to talk about it, and then Fred was able to modify his plans in function of some of that feedback, and then we kind of worked from there. And then later on in the year we'll touch back about how the mushrooms and sprouts are going and whether the assumptions were right about how it was working, how we can do things different later on.

So we kind of try to have a bit of a longer view on some stuff and not wait until the last second to, you know, it's mid-May and I show up with 25 hives saying, yeah, I'm adding a hive, a honey component to our farm, which will definitely create a larger conflict. Right. Yeah, so just trying to look ahead. That sounds like a great strategy. Now, Dan, I'd like to finish by just focusing on some of the benefits

of running a farm business as a, as a cooperative. Um, so I'm wondering, like we already touched on a couple or I, I I'll, I'll, I'll mention the ones that I did at the start. Like, uh, I think you can ultimately save a lot of money on labor because you have owners who are all really committed to putting in the hours necessary and, and labor is a huge cost for a farm. Um think it can allow you to potentially own land, make land more affordable just because there's more people involved. And I think that having a cooperative allows you to bring together like a diversity of strengths. I think of all of my shortcomings as a farmer and how much I would benefit from having a group that would bring different strengths in areas where I'm actually weak. I'm wondering if you can add to that list.

I mean, what do you think having this cooperative has allowed you to do that it wouldn't have allowed if you had set out on your own? Well, I might just comment on some of the things that you mentioned. Sure. And then I'll talk about some other benefits. Well, I might just comment on some of the things that you mentioned. Sure. And then I'll talk about some other benefits.

But one of the things, your first comment was about saving money on labor. And I think that that's actually not specifically true about a co-op. If you're an individual and you hire some employees, if you're running a well-managed farm, generally you're hiring employees that are working for less than you are working for, and they're generating revenue that goes to cover their wage and support the farm. When you're farming with other people making the same wage as you, you have to generate more revenue to get everybody to have the same wages. So there's definitely a savings that you get.

So the big savings of starting off at a co-op farm is that, in our case where there's three households on this farm, if we had started three separate farms, we'd still have a barn or a wash station, a tractor, a cold room. And so by being one farm, we really reduce our infrastructure needs. But on the other hand, because we're all expecting to make a managerial salary or an employer salary, we have to generate more revenue to make that amount. And so it kind of balances out a little bit on the financial level. What I would say about labor, though, is that from the beginning, you have a committed workforce,

and you don't have to worry about hiring new people if you're just the co-op. Now, at this point, we do hire five paid apprentices on an annual basis. So we're 10 people in the field. But for the first two or three years, it was just the five of us. But every year when we hire people, you know, hire new people, you've got to go through different applications. You interview people. You check references. But you don't really know who the person is.

And then they start working with you. And, you know, it takes a while to work things through. And then they might quit on you. Or maybe they're not a great employee. Sometimes they're awesome. But you don't know what you're getting into. And every year you have to replace your turnover. Whereas with the farmers that are there, we just, you know, if I become a better carrot buncher and I'm staying with the farm bunching carrots as an owner,

that skill just keeps being improved and keeps contributing back to the farm. So it creates a more continuous skill base down the road. You can get the same kind of thing if you have employees come back for many years, but it can take a while before you find the right mix of employees that you do want to invest in at that level. So, yes, I definitely get the advantage, of employees that you do want to invest in in that level um so um so it's so so yeah so i definitely it's an advantage but um it's yeah it's what's an advantage um i think what really the best thing about being a co-op is kind of coming back to the the scared the shared skills but also the shared responsibilities. If you're an individual or a couple running a farm, you have to do all the growing,

all the greenhouse work, all the machinery work, perhaps the machinery maintenance. You have to do your bookkeeping. You have to do your marketing. You've got to get taxes in to the government. You've got to do maybe your branding. You're physically at your farmer's markets. You're doing the tax at the end of the year. So there's all these different things that you're having to balance,

in addition to maybe growing 50 different crops. And I think the stress levels get really high on having one or two people wearing all those different hats. And in our case, we can split the responsibilities by five people. Fred does all the bookkeeping and relates to all the stuff related to taxes, so none of the rest of us have to really think about it. Renee deals with organic certifiers. She does the application. She deals with the inspectors.

So none of us have to think about it. Emily does all the planning about the CSA basket and what's going to be it over the growing season, and so the extent that we're thinking about it is kind of in conjunction of what she's asking of individual farmers. So we're able to really separate the responsibilities that way, and then each of us also, you know, we might be in charge of, you know, five or 10 crops. So we can learn how those crops grow well, and we can do a much better job than if we had 50 crops we're balancing. So it really, really reduces the stress level on any individual one person and lets them focus easier on the tasks that they have to do.

So that's one part of that. The other part is having more people that really understand how the farm works means that any individual farmer is less vital to the operation than if you have less farmers. I can imagine that if you have a new staff on your farm, Jordan, and you happen to break your leg or you got really sick, it would really put a challenge in your operation. You might not be able to get everything done as easily. Now, if you have a couple of employees who have been there for a few years, they'll be able to pick up some of the slack.

But not like an owner or a member of the cooperative can. Yeah. I mean, I take your point. So there's a big resilience that gets built into that. And it's something that I don't think we saw when we started the farm, but at this point we're really aware of that any one of us can be out because they're sick, or maybe they're having a baby, or maybe they just need a break and they take a week or two off, and the farm can keep running, and it can keep running really well. And so over time we've also, like each of us takes a week off in the growing season.

And, you know, usually it's a couple that will leave together. So Emily and I might leave one week, and the farm can still keep running during that time. And so that's really been the greatest thing is just there's a much higher quality of life because we're running this operation as a cooperative and that it's evolved the way we've had. We've let it evolve. And, yeah. Well, Dan Brisebois, I am very grateful that you took the time to come on

and tell us all about the successes you've enjoyed and the insights you've gained from, from this cooperative. Uh, I'm probably as grateful for that as your, uh, fellow cooperative members are that you are the one that pulled the straw on having to be in charge of indulging, uh, podcast requests and the like, um, so that they don't have to, uh, but thank you so much, Dan, for coming on today. Oh, it's been a pleasure. Okay, that's the end of another episode. Number 51, I think.

That's pretty good, hey? Anyway, Dan Brisebois, I haven't mentioned yet, is also the co-author of an excellent book for new farmers, or more experienced farmers who are doing an insufficient job of doing a formal crop plan. Anyway, it's called Crop Planning for Organic Vegetable Growers. It's available through Canadian Organic Growers. I used this book to teach myself how to do a crop plan. And man, it was written.

It's so good. Written by Dan and also his co-author, Frederick Theroux. I really highly recommend it. I hope you'll check it out. So coming down the pipe, I've got a pretty interesting conversation for the livestock farmers out there. It's with a woman who has perfected a pretty interesting system of rotational grazing, mob grazing, but more importantly, she's come up with an interesting set of rules she uses to govern how she manages her breeding stock. She's really quite knowledgeable on the subject and just impressive to listen to.

So that should be next week and also coming up here in BC, British Columbia. We are the lucky region that can claim to have produced this new genetically modified apple called the Arctic apple. And I have a woman who is very unhappy about the introduction of the Arctic apple into the commercial market. And she's going to kind of get into that a bit. So I'm looking forward to talking to her. That hasn't happened yet, but it will. And when it does, it'll be brought to you. And I hope you enjoy this episode.

Thanks a lot for listening, everybody. And I hope you'll check out the website, theruminant.ca. All kinds of great stuff there. Have a good week. I need a big old house or some fancy car To keep my love going strong So we'll run right out into the wilds and braces we'll keep close quarters with gentle

faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be Bye.