PEER ADVISORY COUPLE COACHES SINCE 1975, THEN AND NOW
What fun to
now reflect on so many good times we’ve had, and continue to have, in the
various ways Barbara, my wife, and I have served as peer couple coaches. As you read
our experiences, note what we’ve learned.
We now look forward to what we’ll learn, perhaps with you, in our new
serious 4-H farm management program for HS kids and their parents who crop
farm.
We
introduced our first two peer couples to each other in 1975. One was a young Indiana couple, then farming
near us. They were recent Purdue
grads. She was the family income
provider, teaching school. When his ag business job didn’t work out, he looked for alternatives,
including renting a nearby farm with buildings so poor that no one lived there,
and the farm manager could find no one who would raise hogs there. After being turned down twice, they finally
got an FHA loan, and rented the 200 acres of good land. Instead of buying two groups of 20 gilts as
their loan called for, they bought three groups, and soon had pigs
everywhere. When he showed the owner
his plans for a hog building and offered to construct it if she bought the
materials, she looked at her farm manager who nodded, and that building was the
first of many.
He was one
of the nine non-traditional students who joined with nine undergrads to enroll
in a new Purdue farm management “Business Plan” class started by John Kadlec in
1971. I helped him teach the first class
on Tuesday/Thursday evenings the first 10 weeks of spring semester. We had no traditional lectures. Instead, the students focused on preparing
and presenting their plan to their peers, and we coached them. As former professional farm managers, John
and I were already experienced coaches.
I’m still an accredited farm manager and an accredited agricultural
consultant.
As the class
size expanded, we each taught a section, and sometimes, two sections. I soon called mine the “How to go home and
start farming with dad class”, and I added a “Farming Together Winter Weekend
Workshop” for parents to learn what their kids were
learning/doing/teaching. I taught that
class for thirty years, and it’s still going.
Learning that the workshop was discontinued this year motivated Barbara
and me to start our serious 4-H farm management program now.
The other
couple lived south of Columbus, Ohio. I
had known him in college, although we were in different fraternities. They had
also married while still in college. He
borrowed used machinery from his dad’s farm equipment dealership to start
farming. He and an employee were no-till
farming 1300 acres when he attended the first Purdue Top Farmer Crop Workshop.
Joining the
Purdue Ag Econ faculty on January 1, 1968 to help start that crop workshop, I
took the lead on machinery economics, and on helping farmers use the linear
program crop budget to test their own crop farming timeliness-related
alternatives. I’m still doing that.
The Indiana
couple became Extension clients; the Ohio couple became consulting
clients. I coached both as they tested
before they invested in larger and still larger machinery and farm
rentals. One even got his own Purdue
computer account. Both became trusted
speakers at Top Farmer Workshops.
You wouldn’t
know it now, but one refused to look at the farmer audience the first time he
spoke. He stood with his back to the
crowd as I asked him questions about the slides showing his machinery,
including his two same size used tractors.
He shared, although he didn’t need a second tractor the same size, the
extra insurance cost was only three dollars per acre. If his planter tractor quit, he could be
planting with the other in less than an hour.
In 1975,
Barbara and I introduced the two couples.
We became their peer coaches, as together, we learned/did/taught each
other, how to share business organizations, balance sheets, and budgets, and
then to monitor each other’s physical/financial performances. Once they learned to question each other
objectively, they soon respected each other, and each became the other’s “key
man” advisor. They still are. And, at various stress times, each has
stepped into a management role on the other’s farm.
I will
always remember driving home from Ohio one Sunday evening after we had spent
the weekend with the other two couples on the Ohio farm. As we passed Richmond, Barbara said, “You
didn’t say much this weekend.” I
reflected back over the events of the previous 48 hours silently. Thirty miles later, Barbara said, “What you
did say wasn’t all that good.” I
continued driving. Perhaps she was
saying things to keep me awake. Just
past Indy, Barbara concluded, “Those guys were better than you in
everything.” I drove all the way to our
near West Lafayette home. I knew she was
right.
When we got
home, I called the local couple, shared what Barbara had said, and asked, “We
introduced you, and taught you. Now, why
do you continue to invite us to your peer sessions?” His response? After chuckling, he said, “We like to listen
to your 1,001 mostly “C-minus” ideas.
Then, we pick out two or three, and make “A” practices out of them!”
Both
families continued to have great careers, eventually doing significant off-farm
things.
Several
years later, at the same national convention, eight years apart, each of the
men received the “Distinguished Service to American Agriculture Award”. As he accepted the award, the first farmer
thanked various persons, and then looked at me and said, “There’s the guy with
1,001 mostly C-minus ideas”. After the
laughter subsided, he went on. “We
picked out two or three and made “A’ practices out of them. That’s why I’m standing here.” I cried.
I cried a second time when the other farmer made the same statement
eight years later. What great fun!
Then, one of
them was honored with a second Distinguished Service to American Agriculture
Award. The following year, I received
that award. Speaking to the American
Agricultural Editors Association, I made one point, “Let’s do what we can to
revitalize the Land Grant System!” I am.
In the late
70’s, a great Extension Agent and I started the West Central Association. He created the mailing list. I created a
recruiting questionnaire. For each
question, I made three answers, expecting the majority of the respondents to
pick the middle answer. For example,
when I asked, “Do you want to have a consultant for each 50, 100, or 150
couples?”, I expected the majority to answer
“100”. When I asked, “Do you want to
have a rookie, a good consultant, or the best?”, I
expected they would answer, “a good consultant”. When I asked what they expected to pay, I
listed choices of $250, $500, and $1,000.
Twelve
couples responded. They said they wanted
a top advisor, expecting to pay him $2,000 each, and to have him work with 25
families. The agent and I decided to
create the association, and I began to serve, for free, as if I were the
advisor. The first assignment was to
help each family create their market value balance sheet, and to calculate
their family living for the previous year.
That first
January, the agent and I spent a day on each farm. As I drove out the lane from the first
family, the agent said, “I was so wrong.
As their advisor, I’ve worked closely with them for years and I was
completely wrong in my estimate of their earned net worth!” The agent said that again, after we worked
with the second family, and the third, and each of the twelve! We learned they spent from $12,000 to $60,000
in family living the previous year, and their total earned net worth varied
from a little to a lot, with the most humble having a lot.
What a
fantastic learning experience for the agent and for me! That’s why Barbara and I insist that peer
couples share balance sheets and budgets as soon as they commit to be peer
advisors.
Thinking
that I needed to help persons have a lower cost association, an agent and I
started one in another county, and I also served the first year as their
advisor. What did I learn? I learned that persons
who paid a little, did a little. Thus,
for years, Barbara and I have offered to work with farmers for free or for a
lot. The farmers who pay more do more.
Then, with
Purdue agronomists, I helped start groups of three farmers each who studied
each other’s crop farming performances.
I was pleasantly surprised when my best group was three neighbors. They had different goals, different resources,
different ages, and a common desire to improve their cropping systems. It helped that only one of them wanted to
rent more land.
Perhaps here
is the place to describe an association that almost happened. On October 30, 1961, my former Ohio State Ag
Econ Department Chair called to offer me a State Extension position, helping to
start a new on-farm research project on cost of raising hogs and beef, and
later, dairy and crops. He said I could
get a PhD, while on the job. Thinking I had learned about all I would learn,
while living on our home farm and managing 16 SW Ohio farms, I took the OSU
job, and recruited seven of my tenants for the hog farm research.
At the end
of two years, as I was about to move onto the dairy farm study, 37 of my 75 hog
farmers asked me to become their advisor, whatever that meant, since it was
unprecedented. The offer was really
tempting. However, I knew something my
farmers didn’t realize; namely, they had learned about all they were going to
learn from me. Unless I stayed with the
university where I could stay up to date, I would soon be out of a job. I’ve repeated that analysis and made that
decision many times since.
Just after
Barbara retired from Purdue, and just before I did, we helped start the
Southwest Association, what became a group of eight farmers from six farms,
some of them my former students. It was hard, but, the
first day they shared their business organizations, balance sheets and budgets
the group was a success!
We were
meeting in a new machine shed at tables set in a square. The group included three county agents, one
of whom became our convener. As she does
so well during our other consultations, Barbara was the facilitator. We started at 9 am. Even though our farmer host had pizza brought
in, by the pre-agreed 3 pm closing time, we had evaluated only two of the six
businesses!
Barbara and
I continued to meet with this group, three-four times per year, for eight
years. Most of them had perfect
attendance! What fun last week to see
three of them, plus the convener county agent, as we walked the aisles at the
Louisville Machinery Show, including two sons of brothers I had taught in
Purdue eight-week winter short course. I just now sent an email to that agent,
offering to help him start a serious 4-H farm management pilot club.
Read about
this program elsewhere on this website.
Recognize we’re doing this for fun; for you, and for us. Sometimes that’s the best attitude to have
for learning/doing/teaching. We think
we’re uniquely qualified, and you are, too.
Together, let’s make our best, better.
FARM PEER ADVISORS, INC. That’s the name of our new 501-3.C, a
non-profit we incorporated in Ohio in April, 2012. Thus, if/when we need such an entity, we have
it. We want farmer members to run it.