Filter by Popular CategoriesBusiness Mentorship Network – Hundredfold Farm
Posted on April 3, 2026
Filter by Popular Categories
“We continued this way for years, not really running our business, but letting the rhythm of the everyday life of the farm and home run us. Now it is 12 years later and although we have grown, we realized that we needed to seek out help to learn to manage our business, and not the other way around.”
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 open in Fall 2026. Click below to be notified when applications open!
Mentor applications are accepted year-round. Check out the Business Mentorship Network page for more information!
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: Hundredfold Farm
Hello from Kim (she/her) and Randy (he/him) of Hundredfold Farm on Treaty 1 territory in Manitoba. We own and steward 28 acres of the traditional lands of the Anishinabewaki (ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ), Michif Piyii (Métis), Cree, Anishininiimowin (Oji-Cree), and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples. We produce and sell yarn, clothing and home-goods from our small herd of Alpacas. Our farm mentor is Anna Hunter from Long Way Homestead.
Randy grew up on a family grain farm near Portage la Prairie, and Kim grew up in Winnipeg, wishing to live on a farm. Together in 2012 we bought an old cattle farm with savings and purchased our first alpacas in 2014. We fell in love with the soft fibre, and the quiet gentle animals. Neither of us had any idea what we were doing. Thankfully the incredible local alpaca community in Manitoba freely shared their knowledge, and we explored lots of online forums, YouTube videos, books (The Camelid Companion by Marty McGee Bennet was a terrific help), and good old trial and error.
From the beginning, we worked to steward our land and animals as naturally as we could. We utilize rotational grazing, use chicken tractors in the summer to fertilize and improve our pasture health, use no-till and no chemical approach in our garden, yard, pastures and hayfields, and compost our garden and barn waste to fertilize garden and hay fields.
Alpaca fibre grows in 22 beautiful natural colours, which is how we sell most of our yarn. Anything we do dye is with farm grown natural dye plant materials. As much as we are able, we prioritize local businesses and production. Our current processing mill is about an hour away in Austin, and there we have our fibre spun into small batch, single source yarns. We have found that our current customers love knowing the story of the animal who grew their yarn, and being able to follow through social media, or visiting them on the farm.
The early years of our farm seemed idyllic. We started with 4 animals, and felt they were easy to care for. We had no issues with pregnancy, birth or parasites, Kim learned to crochet, then knit. We found mills to spin our fibre harvest into yarn, and sold at local markets and Fibre Festivals. Randy worked off farm, and Kim took care of the business and eventually began to homeschool our 2 children as they grew into school-age. We continued this way for years, not really running our business, but letting the rhythm of the everyday life of the farm and home run us. Now it is 12 years later and although we have grown, we realized that we needed to seek out help to learn to manage our business, and not the other way around.
So, here we are, not new farmers, not young, but thankfully, the Young Agrarians have a place for us. We have already learned so much just in the first couple of months of the program. Our goal is to improve our marketing strategy, explore new ideas to bring life into our farm business, and hopefully, make more than we spend and stop relying on Randy’s job to pay for the expenses of the farm. Long-term we hope to replace most or all of Randy’s off-farm income and have both of us working to build this dream into a reality.
You can follow us on Instagram (instagram.com/hundredfoldfarmmb) and Facebook (facebook.com/HundredfoldFarm) and at our website (www.hundredfoldfarm.ca)
