More Canadian farms are making formal business meetings

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The joke used to be that if you want to hold a meeting on the farm, all you really need is a mirror. But you don?t hear that joke so often anymore. And even when you did hear it, it was never as true as the joke tried to make it seem. Farmers may not always have had meetings, but they?ve always interacted, even if there wasn?t always a whole lot that was verbal about how they did it.


Geoff Hewson?s experience is a good example. The family?s 8,000-acre grain and oilseed farm at Langbank, a couple hours east of Regina didn?t always need meetings. ?Before our generation began taking a more active role on the farm, my father and uncle Robin and Thomas were running it,? says Geoff, who is also vice-president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers. ?They didn?t see a big need for a formalized meeting structure. They were in contact with each other all the time, and always had an unspoken connection, not feeling the need to talk a whole lot.?


Growing up on the farm, Geoff felt the whole family was included, noting, ?We certainly weren?t kept in the dark. We didn?t make the decisions, but they weren?t kept from us either.? 


As other family members got more involved (now the farm includes Geoff and his wife Amy, his sister Margaret, and his cousin Mark and his wife Amber),the farm outgrew that kind of ?it-will-happen-on-its-own? approach.


Geoff says the family began having regular meetings when his sister returned to the farm full time, noting, ?It just developed from there. There wasn?t particular tension or issues before, but looking back, I think it was a smart move ? done proactively, not reactively.?


Starting in the winter of 2002, the family began meeting every Monday, typically for a one- to two-hour meeting, and they?ve continued building on and refining that strategy ever since.


Meanwhile, a half-day?s drive west of the Hewsons at Innisfail, Alta., the Edgar family also had an approach to farm meetings that many families will recognize.


Elna Edgar has been married now for 37 years, and recalls having sat down to her first family meeting the day after she married her brother?s best friend (whom she had known since the age of five).


?My mother- and father-in-law lived on the same farm in the same yard with us for the first 10 years of our marriage ? and not a bad word was ever spoken between us,? says Elna.


Elna?s in-laws later moved to town, while she and her family moved into their farmhouse. Her father-in-law decided to return to work at the farm for quite a while after. ?He always felt welcome to come back and work if he wanted to,? says Elna. ?And if he wanted to stay in town for the day, that was fine too.?


?He and my mother-in-law were fantastic to work with. Everything was out in the open. We?d come over every morning ? a ritual ? have coffee and plan out the day. There?s always been that open line of communication. 


?Farming is my passion,? says Elna. ?There?s nothing else I?d rather be doing. I?ve never been a housewife. I?ve always been a farmer.?


The Edgars settled in the area in 1907. Today, Elna and her husband Doug are the fourth generation of Edgars working this land. A fifth generation is starting up too, with the Edgars? daughter, Keri, and son-in-law Randy having built a house on the quarter south of them.


?Together, we continue having daily meetings with a lot of things being hashed out as we go,? says Elna. ?Everyone knows what everyone else is planning for the day, and what everyone else is thinking.?


Read more at http://www.agcanada.com/countryguidewest/2012/05/14/meet-the-family-2/
 
 
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