YA BUSINESS MENTORSHIP NETWORK – Metanoia Farmers Worker Cooperative

Young Agrarians is celebrating the twelfth year of the Business Mentorship Network (BMN) program in BC and the fourth year of the BMN in the Prairies! The BMN offers a year-long farm business mentorship to a diverse array of new and young farmers. Through one-on-one mentorship, peer networks, and online workshops, new farmers develop the skills necessary to operate ecologically sustainable and financially viable farm businesses.

Applications for Mentees across Canada are now open! Mentor applications are accepted year-round. Click below for more information and to apply.

Meet a mentee from the current cohort and learn about their farm and why they joined the Business Mentorship Network. Want more? Head over to our BMN Blog for more mentorship stories.

Meet a Mentee: Metanoia Farmers Worker Cooperative

The 2025 growing season at Metanoia Farmers Worker Cooperative was organized and led by Megan Klassen-Wiebe (she/her), Bryn Friesen Epp (they/them), Kay Drudge (they/them), and Trey Dornn (he/him). Around a dozen farm sharers participated in regular shared labour and formed the core group of people who planted, cared for, and harvested this season’s fruits and vegetables. Frédéric Thériault from Ferme Coopérative Tourne-Sol and Productions Locavore has been our Business Mentorship Network mentor for the 2025 growing season.

Metanoia Farmers Worker Cooperative is located at the outskirts of the Assiniboine forest on Treaty One territory.

What were your goals for this season?

Our main goal for this season was shifting our operational structure from being a CSA run by 4 full-time farmers towards being a volunteer-run community urban farm. Our goal was to structure ways for people who wanted access to local produce, growing space, a communal growing experience, and urban food production education the ability to invest in our space and benefit from each other’s labour and energy. In other words, we wanted to recruit, organize, and support a group of core volunteers who provided labour to grow vegetables and care for the land.

What went well this season relating to your goals? What were one or two victories, small or large, that you had this season?

Our labour shares (volunteers) brought incredible energy, knowledge, and enthusiasm to the farm, allowing shared work evenings to be highly productive and energizing. We were able to get a lot more done with a solely volunteer based labour system than we had expected and hoped, and having new energy on the farm made the season enjoyable and exciting.

We also ran an egg CSA for the first time and it ran really smoothly. Egg sharers (the people picking up their egg subscription) were involved in the daily chicken chores so the CSA provided not only eggs within an urban context, but also opportunities to interact with the hens on a semiregular basis and learn chicken care. There were some very eager kids that loved to collect eggs!

What were one or two big, hard lessons this season you would want to share with other farmers?

Proactive communication is so important. We put a lot of work into developing documents that outlined the operational flow of different aspects of the farm, and these were really important to give volunteers a sense of clarity and structure as they joined into the farm season. It was a hard lesson, mainly because it took a lot of work, and there were many detailed sections that were not referenced much, if at all, during the season. But the sense or organization and participation in a system that these policies and other documents brought to day-to-day farm activities was really worth the work.

What was the best piece of feedback or praise you got from a customer? 

“I have loved being a labour sharer this season! I’ve really appreciated the supportive environment (such a great group of people) and the behind-the-scenes administrative intentionality, thoroughness, and visioning. I can’t think of anything I’ve had issue with!” – Regular volunteer (labour sharer)

What was the most valuable piece of advice your mentor gave you or the most important thing you gained from the YA Business Mentorship Network Program experience?

Frédéric has some very practical experience with running a farm with a holacratic (nonhierarchical and decentralized) operational structure. Although this operational structure likely won’t be integrated into Metanoia’s operations right away and may not be a perfect fit for our organization, Frédéric’s knowledge of holacracy provided a valuable new perspective that really aided in some of the visioning and restructuring process we worked through together.

In what ways did the BMN program and support of your mentor help you refine or reshape the long-term direction of your farm? What will you do differently next year?

Frédéric helped us put together a new management structure that reflected Metanoia’s core value and vision. For many years, there has been fairly quick turnover in farmers within the co-op, and this new model will hopefully both make Metanoia a more hospitable space for long-term farmer commitment and structure personnel transitions in ways that will be less disruptive to the farm’s operations. This new structure is the main change we are implementing in the 2026 season and we are excited!

What are you most looking forward to this winter?

During the winter months, the new farm team will meet five separate times to plan the 2026 growing season. We are excited for these gatherings to bring some shared energy and connection to the winter farm work that can often be more isolating and less glamorous than the shared field work during the growing season. We are excited to have more people who are invested the shared growing space involved in the visioning and planning of our organization.

Where can we find you online?

You can follow us on Facebook (Metanoia Farmers), Instagram (@metanoiafarmers) and on our website (metanoiafarmers.ca)

Feeling inspired and ready to dig into your business with a mentor? Mentee applications are open from October 1st-31st, 2025. Mentor applications are open year-round.