Apprentices: Farmers of the Future
by Bob Kidwell of Montgomery, MI
What can be more important to sustainable farming than training farmers to insure its continuation? If farm numbers are to increase, we must have a way to pass the necessary skills on to the next generation. In speaking with Paul Birdsall of Maine, who has had about 130 apprentices over 27 years on his horse powered farm, he said, “Molly and I always considered having apprentices to be the most important thing we did.” He now has a whole network of small farmer friends who were once his apprentices.
Then, of course, there are the more immediate advantages to the farmer who can use the help. You can always use more hands to get the hay in, weed the garden, or work the horses. Surprisingly, this is actually secondary in importance. More important is to experience, even if only second hand, the enthusiasm of someone learning new, exciting things. Eventually comes the satisfaction of seeing your apprentices become a part of the all important small farming community.
For the past couple years, as we’ve noticed ourselves getting older, and our workforce of two sons developing their own interests, we’ve been considering what farming options might be available to us. We could reduce our acreage so two people could handle it. We could use tractors more and horses less to get the field work done faster. We could shift our rotation to more small grains and less hay. None of the choices seemed to be what we wanted, so we decided to give an apprentice a try.
The first year the only responses to our advertisements were either from people inappropriate for our situation or who felt we weren’t right for them. Then last winter we learned through friends of an 18 year old girl in Austria who had always dreamed of having a small farm. She was looking for just what we were offering.
As we e-mailed back and forth to Austria last winter, we kept having second thoughts. What about the language barrier? The distance made a visit beforehand impossible. What if things didn’t work out? As it turned out, shortly after meeting Regina, we knew she’d make a great apprentice. She could only get a three month visa, so that limited her stay.
Her English was good and posed little difficulty, though there were some humorous episodes, like the time she thought we had asked her to move the sheep into a small pen by herself. We hadn’t, and were quite surprised to find them there. It was love at first sight for the horses, goats, baby calves, and sheep. She arrived in April during lambing and quickly became a big help with the sheep. It wasn’t long before she learned to milk the goats. Gradually she took over many of the daily chores.
Being new at this mentoring business, we went slow starting her out with the horses. First she was limited to currying. Then came the harness. Being rather small she had trouble carrying the harnesses and reaching over the collars with the hames. She decided she would have Haflingers on her farm. Finally, as she grew more experienced and stronger, she became quite good at it. Next we let her have the thrill of ground driving. Before long she was spreading manure, driving four horses on the disc, three horses on our Pioneer riding plow, mowing, tedding, and raking hay. In the beginning we had someone work with her all the time. Later we tried to have her work in fields near the house so we could check on her easily. By the time her three months ended she had the skill and confidence to take the horses to the field by herself.
Suddenly, last July, the three months did end, and we with heavy hearts had to take her to the airport for her trip home. She had practically become a member of the family. Now we are getting e-mails from her again back at her parents’ home in a small Austrian town. Recently she told us she’d built a goat milking stand with carpentry skills she learned here. She had measured our stand and converted inches to centimeters. As yet she has no goat, but sometime…
What requirements are there for someone taking on a farm apprentice? First, you must have the skills sought by the apprentice. This shouldn’t be a problem for someone who has lived on and worked a small farm for a few years. For horse farming, you must have horses that behave well enough to be handled by an inexperienced person. You must have a reasonable amount of patience, and be willing to accept the fact that the work may not get done as well as you could do it yourself. I had to remember, if I were working alone it might not get done at all. Most any good teacher would probably say that you cannot “teach” anyone anything. All you can do is provide a situation where learning can take place. A small horse-powered farm provides a wonderful learning situation.
What makes a good apprentice? From our limited experience and discussions with others, there is one trait to look for that far outweighs all others. The one thing the apprentice must have is enthusiasm. He or she must really be motivated to learn from the experience. They should be at least 18 years old, and they must be people you feel comfortable with. I suppose physical strength might be important in some cases, but is not a primary consideration. The length of stay is important. Anything less than three months may not be long enough to recover the time you spend during the early learning stages. This is especially true for working horses. Four to six months is better. It is important they understand the education is the main pay they will receive. You are not offering employment. A visit prior to making a commitment is a good idea and gives the opportunity to discuss issues that might become problems later.
What type of housing do you need? Usually room and board comes with being a farm apprentice. Some people provide an entire separate house with cooking facilities. Others have the apprentices live in their farmhouse and share their meals. We compromised here and built a little, portable 12 foot by 14 foot cabin on skids so the apprentice could have more privacy. It’s only about 100 feet from the house, sort of a detached bedroom. Regina spent most of her time in the house with us, but some people might need to retreat in the evening after a day with a strange farm family.
In listings of available apprenticeships you see specific work hours like 44 hours per week. We are probably more laid back about this requirement than most. We work pretty much all the daylight hours up to 6 P.M. in the summer, but we take plenty of time out for meals and rest breaks. Some days, like when it rains, there just isn’t much that needs to be done, so we all go our own ways; reading, napping, listening to music, or whatever. Other times we might bale hay until 8 P.M., and maybe chase sheep from the road back into the pasture well after dark. Life is too short to work all the time. I guess the point is, you don’t want to treat apprentices like slaves, but you expect them to help when needed. A friend humorously referred to our little cabin as the “slaves’ quarters.” In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
“To pay or not to pay?” is an important question. I don’t know if the word “stipend” is interchangeable with the word pittance, but it doesn’t add up to much. At first we planned not to pay any cash to our apprentice. But later we saw this might keep away some people who felt they should have a little income for personal needs. Now we have decided to pay $25 per week, an amount probably thought insulting even by Mexican laborers making car parts to ship to the U.S. It won’t tempt people to come just for the money. A larger stipend would be required if they have to buy their own food.
How can a farmer find an apprentice? If yours is a draft-animal powered farm, it can be listed at no charge in the “Good Farming Apprenticeship Network” sponsored by Rural Heritage magazine. Placing a brief description of what you’re offering in a classified ad in horse farming magazines like Small Farmers Journal may prove helpful. Here, again, it is important to make it clear you’re not offering employment, unless, of course, you are. If you live in a state with an active organic farming organization, you might check with them. The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, for example, has been placing apprentices on organic farms for years.
On the other side of this question a person wishing to apprentice on a small farm can check the places mentioned above. Or they might contact an organic farming organization and if there is no specific program, consider talking directly to some farmer members. It never hurts to ask.
Although much of this discussion has focused on animal powered farms, there is certainly no reason other small farms shouldn’t offer apprenticeships. Teamster skills are only one aspect of farming.
There are people in cities anxious to try out life on a small farm. In rural areas there is a desperate need for more people in the small farm community. An apprenticeship can assist someone in making the transition. After all, life’s pretty good out here. We can only improve upon it by sharing it.
