A weary-looking farmwoman waits patiently in line, making sure she is the last one to speak to me privately after my keynote address one day.

Farmers are problem-solvers and fixers, but I don’t think we anticipated the ripple effect of a pandemic on our families, our farms and our future. I’ve spent the last few weeks anchored at my farm office calling out to farmers, listening and drilling deep to share a well of hope.

Good health and well-being of farm team members is paramount to a farm’s sustainability. As part of a mini-series focused on Alltech’s global sustainability goals, the company offered a virtual panel discussion on June 25, highlighting health and wellness from a Canadian perspective.

It warms my coaching heart to sit in a workshop with a group of smart women in agriculture who truly want better communication on our farms.

As the co-author of Farming’s In-Law Factor, I spent a year of Tuesdays researching, interviewing and asking tough questions about marriage on the farm.

A distraught, middle-aged farmwoman recently asked me for advice on buying her daughter a farmhouse just down the road. This is a loaded question. When farm founders are considering how long they want to live on the farm, there can be a lot of conflict and frustration.

Sitting on my stool in front of the third farm audience of the week, I should not have been surprised to receive the same question for the third time by text: “Elaine, how we do we stop the conflict on our farm?”

Sometimes I wish I didn’t have real-life examples of how I make mistakes. One harvest, I was the combine driver who backed into the fuel truck while I was unloading my auger for cleanout to move to the next field. I’ve had many accidents while backing up, so I should have checked my mirrors.