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! If you are a new farmer or the next generation to take on your family farm and need support to figure out the business aspects of your farm consider applying for the 2024/2025 cohort. The BMN offers business mentorships to a diverse array of new and young farmers/ranchers/producers. 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.
Apply for the 2024/2025 program here – applications processed in October .
Check out the Business Mentorship Network page for more information!
We want to introduce you to each of the new farmers in the 2024 cohort to hear about the arc of their farming journey, what their hopes are for the season ahead and what inspired them to reach out for business mentorship. To access more of these stories head over to our blog here.
Meet a Mentee: Rayne Beveridge at The Yellow House Farm
My name is Rayne Beveridge. We lease 17 acres of land and operate a certified organic, no till, market garden farm in Maple Ridge on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied, traditional lands of the Kwantlen and Katzie Nations of the Coast Salish peoples.
My first introduction to farming was by starting a small garden plot in my back yard. I immediately fell in love with the complexity and magic of growing food. I saw in it beauty, opportunity, adversity, and personal growth.
I began to read several books on gardening and farm building as well as follow and listen to master gardeners on social media. It got me excited about participating in the growing movement toward more sustainable agriculture. That, in conjunction with my landlord at the time carelessly mowing down my little garden with his ride-on, led us to move onto a property of our own and start gardening on a larger scale.
It started with a small 10 member CSA that quickly expanded when a chef and old friend of mine from Saskatchewan moved to BC. I was a farmer, he was a chef, so why not open a restaurant together!
As the gardens grew, so did our challenges; logistics, labour, pests, food safety, quality control. We had to learn at breakneck speed on how to manage our new businesses, and the mentorship program could not have come at a better time. Through the mentorship program we have been able to coordinate ourselves better, plan better, and also learn new management practices and procedures.
This year we are laser focused on creating standardized practices on how to deal with pests and disease, building and solidifying our customer relationships, and maintaining our crop goals and keeping good records to ensure the highest volume and quality for our crops and the necessary information we need to better plan for the future.
There’s still a million surprises, plans that don’t work out exactly as we expected, and the days are as long as they always were, but there is a renewed sense of optimism and confidence on the farm that is infectious and exciting!
Find us at
Website: https://yellowhousefarm.ca/