YA BUSINESS MENTORSHIP NETWORK - CROCUS HILL GARDEN

YA BUSINESS MENTORSHIP NETWORK – CROCUS HILL GARDEN

“We [share] a common goal of growing food for our local communities, providing good jobs, and taking care of the land around us.”

– Julie Maxwell and Thomas Maduck of Crocus Hill Garden, Saskatchewan

Young Agrarians is celebrating the eleventh year of the Business Mentorship Network (BMN) program in BC and the third year of the BMN in the Prairies! The BMN offers farm business mentorship to a diverse array of new and young farmers. The mentorship is offered over the course of a year. 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 Western Canada open in October 2025. Mentor applications are accepted year-round. Want to be notified when applications open for the 2026 cohort? Click below!

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: Crocus Hill Garden

We are Julie Maxwell (she/her) and Thomas Maduck (he/him) from Crocus Hill Garden. Our mentor is Mike Kozlowski from Steel Pony Farm.

We farm near Maidstone, SK, on Treaty 6 Territory. Our fields likely hold the footprints of many nomadic peoples such as the Atsina (Gros Ventre), Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Nakota (Assiniboine), Nakawē (Saltbox), Lakota (Sioux), and the Cree. It is difficult to know for sure because these groups were careful not to leave a trail and never to take too much. As white settler-descendants, we are grateful to the original caretakers of the grasslands. We see the direct connection that exists between European colonization of land and the many hardships faced by First Nations and Metis people today, and with this in mind, we pledge to work towards reconciliation in every way we can.

What inspired you to get into farming?

Julie: I grew up on the family grain farm, but as a kid I never imagined taking it over. It wasn’t until I moved to the city and started to learn about environmental and social justice that the farm started calling me back. Eventually I came to realize that the best way for me to make a positive impact on this world was to grow food, steward land, and create good jobs in my local community.

Thomas: My passion for farming was kindled by my grandparents who farmed near Yorkton, Saskatchewan. I remember being excited as a kid to visit them and hear about the farm and get a few opportunities to ride the tractor with my grandfather. They sold the farm when I was young but my fascination with plants and animals grew. I would spend countless hours helping them in the home garden learning how to grow food. I continued expanding on my gardening skills throughout my adult years. When I met Julie, we shared a common goal of growing food for our local communities, providing good jobs and taking care of the land around us. I am very excited to join her on this journey and pursue this work with passion.

How did you learn how to farm?

Julie: There isn’t much for a kid to do on a grain farm, so I wasn’t too involved with it growing up. I’ve also never been big into operating machinery, which is largely what grain farming is. However, I did spend quite a bit of time puttering around with my mom in the vegetable garden. After I left home for university, I took on a bunch of part-time and summer jobs in horticulture- I worked for several years at a hydroponic greenhouse, as well as 3 CSA vegetable farms, before returning home to start Crocus Hill Garden in 2019.

Thomas: I absorbed a lot of information and skills from my grandparents in their gardens. As well as experimenting in my own gardens with information learned from many farming/gardening books and many hours spent on youtube.

Tell us about the structure of your farm.

We currently grow mixed veggies on half an acre, however this season, we are preparing an additional 1 acre of land for next year. As Julie’s dad scales down his grain operation, he is helping us transition some of his conventionally-farmed cropland into organic vegetable fields. We are currently operating as a sole proprietorship, however, as Thomas joins the farm, we are reconsidering which structure will work best for us. Support from my family has made all of this possible- they’ve lent money, land, equipment and provided support in so many other quiet and critical ways, like feeding and housing me while I was just getting started.

What types of ecological farm practices and/or responses to climate change realities do you engage in?

Julie’s family farm is a bit unique in that her parents and grandparents opted to leave a lot of natural habitat (like bluffs and sloughs) intact, rather than convert them into cropland like so many of our neighbours have done. We are committed to protecting this natural habitat, too. In our gardens, we follow organic guidelines and principles of agroecology as much as possible. For us that means: no synthetic sprays or fertilizers, prioritizing soil health, limiting tillage, creating lots of great compost, growing a wide diversity of crops, and keeping our irrigation requirements to a minimum so that we can be as prepared as possible when the next prairie drought hits.

Why did you apply for business mentorship? What are your primary business goals for the season?

We wanted to be intentional and structured with our crop and business planning this year because Thomas is preparing to step away from his 9-5 to join me on the farm. I recognized that there were some gaps in my knowledge, like bookkeeping and financial planning, and I was ready to address them.

We also had been following Mike at Steel Pony Farm for a few years and thought that what he was doing was pretty rad. We wanted to learn more about his approach to collaborative marketing and team management.

What is the greatest challenge you face as a new farmer?

The (nearly) impossible profit margins are definitely our biggest challenge. It is difficult for us to make our farm financials make sense, even with all of the support from family that we’ve been given. Unfortunately, we live in an economy where the cost of production is outpacing profits and creating a cost-price squeeze for the vast majority of farmers. Farm debt is at an all-time high and the majority of farm households rely on off-farm income.

Rural isolation and the degradation of our rural communities is also a big challenge for us, and it is connected to the cost-price-squeeze. Many conventional farmers feel they must increase their production area to cover their costs. And as farms get larger, the farm population gets smaller, and our neighbours get further and further away from us. If Thomas and I did not have each other (and our dogs), life on the farm would be incredibly lonely… but I must say, growing for a CSA helps with this a lot, as our members provide us with a huge sense of community, even though the majority of them are in the city. As well, we are proud, active members of the National Farmers Union, which is an organization full of great people working together to achieve agricultural policies that ensure dignity and income security for farmers and farmworkers.

What are some resources and business tools that have been helpful on your farming journey?

Julie: Two books, The Market Gardener by JM Fortier and Crop Planning for Organic Vegetable Growers by Frederic Theriault and Daniel Brisebois, were huge for me getting started. I’ve also learned a lot from podcasts like The No-Till Market Gardener, The Ruminant and Farmer-to-Farmer. As well, my parents’ knowledge of the land, the local community, and the realities of rural life have been invaluable to us. We are having lots of conversations about succession planning with them right now.

Thomas: The books and podcasts Julie mentioned have been great resources. Youtube has many great channels related to farming and gardening as well. I always try to pick the brains of any local farmers and gardeners I can as well.

We also use Google Sheets quite a bit for crop and business planning. We love that it’s free and open-source, and we can tweak the formatting as needed. I (Julie) am also really grateful to my past-self for setting up a website on Squarespace. It is so slick and easy to use, and I love the phone app, too. It really helps keep all of our sales and communications organized so we can focus more on farming and less on admin work. For bookkeeping and invoicing, we use Wave. The free version worked super well for me for a few years getting started, so I just stayed with it as the business grew.

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