Young Agrarians is celebrating the tenth year of the Business Mentorship Network (BMN) program in BC and the second year of the program 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 are open October 1st to 31st, 2023.
Check out the Business Mentorship Network page for more information!
Mentor applications (paid position) are accepted year-round. Apply here!
Check out one Mentee’s story below and how the BMN made a contribution to the success of their farm.
Want more? Head over to our BMN Blog for more mentorship stories.
Meet a Mentee: Rossdale Farms
My name is Kim Ross. I am proud to be a fifth generation farmer on Treaty 6 territory on my farm, Rossdale Farms, near Mannville, Alberta. I grow healthier vegetables utilizing sustainable agricultural practices which I hope makes me a better steward of the land I have been entrusted to grow on. I also enjoy sharing my farming practices in classes, both online and in person.
My mentor in the Young Agrarians is John Mills with Eagle Creek Farms near Bowden, AB. John is a certified organic vegetable farmer on Treaty 7 territory. He also is from a multigenerational farm so it was fun to share stories of farming with families and what that meant to us!
Season Goals for Rossdale Farms
My goal this year was to use my sustainable gardening practices and expand it large scale. I wanted to grow vegetables commercially with no added inputs of watering, chemicals (fertilizer or pesticides of any type) while reducing the physical input of weeding and water. I went from 26,000 sq ft of no till gardens to 72,000 sq ft!
Improving Soil Health using No-Till Practices
In no till gardening, permanent, raised grow beds are created and covered with 6 inches to 1 foot of mulch. It sounds weird but in agriculture, we are already doing zero or low till growing so I asked why not in vegetable production?
Repetitive tilling breaks down soil structure so over time, the soil “clumps” or aggregates become closer together. When this happens, the soil is compacted. A compacted soil holds less water and air than a soil with good aggregate structure in it. The mulch reduces evaporation of the moisture in the soil and reduces the soil temperatures. Combining the reduction in tilling and the use of mulch will, over time, improve soil health to the point that the soil will hold enough water for the garden without additional watering.
Establishing A New No-Till Field
In my own experience, I have found that in the first season, I still needed to water although less than I would in a traditional garden. In the second year, I only watered crops that use a lot of water like celery. In the third year, my garden no longer required additional water outside of what came down as rain, even in a year with very little rainfall! This means my garden is now drought resistant. I have not had to add supplemental water in three seasons of drought in my established plots!
It is by far better to convert to no till in the fall when the snow melt can build up on the growing beds and melt into the ground to help increase soil moisture levels.
Growing Bulk Brassicas on the Prairies
For the 2023 season, I set for myself a safe goal of 3000 cabbages in the ground and a very hopeful goal of harvesting 6000 cabbages. In the 2022 season, I only grew roughly 260 brassicas (cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower) so this was a significant scaling up for me.
I started my large scale, no-till plot for the cabbages in the spring of 2023. The soil had very poor aggregate structure and no water due to two years of drought and a very hot/dry spring.
Due to the poor quality of the soil in the plot, I took an extra week to put down compost by hand over 42,000 sq ft. I had to plant my field several times as I could not get water on in high enough volume to keep the cabbages alive in the +30 temperatures we received in spring. It finally took hiring a 5 tonne water truck to water every plant on the field to get them to take in the ground.
Dealing with Drought
Due to the third year of drought in my area, it was very hard to source straw for the mulch on the soil over this large of a space. This meant I did not have enough down to help keep the water in the soil. The mulch also serves to prevent annual weeds from germinating in the plot. As I did not have enough straw down, I did have to spend a good deal of time weeding. Weeds compete with the crop for nutrients and water so this also became a growing challenge as well as a physical one!
Weathering Commercial Challenges
The delay in getting the plants into the ground alive resulted in me only getting 2400 plants in the ground but one month late! As I am selling my cabbages commercially, I need them to meet specific size requirements so they fit into the equipment used to process them. While I did manage to harvest 2800 lbs of cabbage this season, a hard first frost in early September ended my season before many of those plants had grown large enough.
While my goal was not even closely met, I learned an incredible amount of how to grow large scale using sustainable agricultural techniques. I now have the experience and confidence to proceed with scaling up to 6000 plants in 2024. I would strongly recommend any plot used for no till growing be prepared a year in advance to help with water and weeds! This would have saved me a lot of stress!
Mentor Support – In It Together
My mentor was incredibly valuable in sharing his knowledge on how to grow large scale without the use of chemicals. It was very helpful to have someone who understood the frustration and stress of attempting to grow large scale when the weather was not cooperating. The challenges at times felt overwhelming and having someone I could go to and get insight and understanding from was invaluable!
Joining the Young Agrarians has taught me the importance of building a network of other growers who grow in a similar manner! Farming is not for the faint of heart and having someone to puzzle out challenges with or just simply commensurate with is huge for helping with mental health! So many times I felt like giving up but a chat with my mentor and hearing about his own challenges help put me back on track to see it through to harvest!
Growing Confidence
I focused on only one crop this year with a local food processor. As my season was a challenge, I am grateful that I did not expand to the extent I hoped to! The poor weather for this growing season turned out to be a blessing in my case as it kept me small enough to really focus on quality rather than quantity. It was definitely uplifting when the employees complimented me on my cabbages! This season did give me the confidence to tackle this challenge with another crop next season so I can begin rotating through growing plots!
Young Agrarians has solidified my business practices and made me aware of additional regulations and programs for farming. Meeting with other mentees who used agri-tourism helped me to look at my farm with the potential for including this in my farm’s plan in future years. My mentor heavily relies on agri-tourism so I learned a great deal about this unexpected but exciting opportunity for my farm that I had not considered previously! I had no idea the insurance regulations required prior to this program and I was able to set that up on Rossdale Farms so that I am protecting myself and my family!
Soil Conservation Yields Bountiful Harvests
In my traditional gardens, I used to struggle to grow a 5 lb cabbage. In 2022, the largest one I grew hit 12 lbs! This season, I had a cabbage hit a hefty 18 lbs! I also had a 11.6 lb turnip and a 7.2 lb beet! I do not have a “green thumb” so to see what happens with healthy soil is absolutely incredible as it happens without a lot of effort on my part!
Traditional growing does not focus on the ecosystem surrounding the gardens. No till gardening works within the natural ecosystems in place so the health of the entire ecosystem improves greatly! From more butterflies, to incredible soils and monster veggies with no weeding and watering, this season with Young Agrarians solidified to me that I can be a commercial vegetable producer on my farm. I think the biggest success I had this year was the validation that sustainable agriculture is a very plausible solution for large scale, commercial food production in Alberta. I may not have had the success with it that I wanted, but it has given me a lot of information to use in my classes to share with other growers and the confidence to continue to expand how much food I can produce!
It does my heart good to know that my family’s farm is carried on through the fifth generation of Ross farmers on Rossdale Farms. My daughter, a horticulture student at the University of Saskatchewan, is planning on making her mark on the sixth generation!
Where to Find Rossdale Farms:
Find out more about Kim Ross, Rossdale Farms, and her products by following her on:
Website – https://rossdalefarm.ca/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RossdaleFarms/