Too often, overworked farmers think of interns or apprentices as a source of low-cost labor. Nothing could be farther from the truth — at least when the internship is structured to benefit the worker as well as the farm owner.

Last month, Growing for Market covered the legal issues surrounding intern pay and compensation. This article is about the work of the New England Small Farm Institute, which has developed excellent materials for on-farm mentors as part of its broader mission to promote small farm development in the Northeast. The NESFI publications are a valuable resource for any farmer who hires interns, as they address the wider social and philosophical issues of farm internships, such as how and why to teach farming, and how to make the experience a positive one for everyone involved.

Three publications are available:
•The On-Farm Mentor’s Guide: Practical Approaches to Teaching on the Farm. 196 pages, $35.
•Cultivating a New Crop of Farmers: Is On-Farm Mentoring Right for You and Your Farm? 49 pages, $20.
•DACUM Occupational Profile for On-Farm Mentor. 4 sheets, $6.

In addition, the NESFI has received a SARE grant for a project called “On-Farm Workstays: Creating Safe and Lawful On-Farm Training Opportunities in the Northeast.” The program will offer information to more than 400 farmers with on-farm training programs about their mentoring responsibilities. Surveys show that 80 to 90 percent of farmers with interns rank “providing farm labor” as the most important or a very important reason for having a training program.  The project proposal explains: “While time a trainee spends in class or hands-on instruction can legitimately be considered ‘education,’ the minute she performs work that contributes to a farm’s bottom line, she becomes an employee. For many farmers, this is an unpleasant surprise. In an increasingly regulatory environment, they are at serious risk.”

And while the legal issues of having people work on your farm as a trainee are critical, they are only a small facet of the complicated job of teaching farming through hands-on work.  

To quote from The On-Farm Mentor’s Guide, written primarily by Miranda Smith and published in 2006:

“You may believe that on-farm mentoring is a straightforward job — you bring people on to your farm, house them in a spare bedroom or a tent by the creek, and then put them to work with you, doing roughly what you are doing, the next morning and every day thereafter.

“There’s a certain amount of realism in this scenario, of course, but it makes no provision for the elements that make mentoring and training on a farm satisfying for both parties. According to experienced on-farm mentors, that sort of casual approach creates painful experiences more often than not. Stories about unhappy farmers and miserable trainees are legion — the most common ones being sad tales of trainees worked to the bone without adequate pay or education; farmers left in the lurch, mid-season, by people who couldn’t handle the long hours or hard physical labor involved in farming; and farmers and trainees alike who, through sheer force of character, managed to suffer through a season despite a strong dislike for essential qualities of the other person.”

The possibilities for failure are not limited to trainees who live on the farm. There are pitfalls with any kind of farm worker, whether volunteer or paid, related or stranger. These books provide a systematic way to plan for happier days on the farm. Both are full of astute observations, self-evaluations, and pertinent advice that will help any farmer who has to hire help.

A panel of farmers put together a list of elements that make a mentoring program successful. Good mentors:
•Are good farmers and good teachers.
•Recruit and select appropriate trainees for their farms.
•Offer a well-planned educational program that includes instruction in both conceptual information and practical farming skills.
•Set up their farms as “teaching laboratories.”

Good enough to teach?
Good mentors are, first and foremost, good farmers themselves. To help farmers know if they are good enough to take on a teaching role, the manual provides a worksheet with self-evaluation questions on technical farming knowledge and farm management knowledge. These are interesting questions for every farmer, whether or not you’re considering mentoring. The self-evaluation questions are reprinted on page 16.

But knowing your stuff doesn’t always mean you’ll be good at teaching it to others. The manual also goes into detail about the particular issues you’ll face as a teacher. For example, it explores the three learning styles that have been identified by educators. They are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic/tactile. No one learns through only one style, but most people are better with one style than the others. The trainee who learns best visually will appreciate printed handouts and demonstrations; the auditory learner prefers discussions and lectures; and the kinesthetic learner needs to perform a task in order to learn it. The manual also explains many common theories of teaching, and helps the reader extrapolate those to teaching about farming.

Living together
Some of the most difficult aspects of on-farm mentoring are those that arise from the relationships between farmers and trainees. The manuals and worksheets will alert you to  potential problems you might not otherwise anticipate. And because they are based on the actual experiences of farmers, they are extremely insightful. For example: Don’t ever start a romance with a trainee. Don’t become good friends with one trainee over others during the employment period. Tell trainees ahead of time that certain topics, such as your parenting methods, are totally off-limits for discussion. The Manual provides a “domestic policies checklist” where you can write down all the nitty-gritty details of who buys, cleans and cooks, noise levels, visitors, clothing (More than underwear in the common areas!), and phone use.

The farmer experts who contributed to the manual, not surprisingly, recommend highly that trainees live somewhere else on the farm if you can afford it. Wherever you house trainees, federal, state and local laws may dictate many features of the housing you provide.

Other topics
The NESFI materials address many other topics in similar detail. They provide samples of job applications and examples of curricula that must be developed in order to make the internship a true educational experience.

These publications are extremely thorough and methodical, while at the same time very readable and practical. If you hire interns now, or think you might at some time in the future, you would be doing yourself an enormous favor to purchase and read The On-Farm Mentor’s Guide, which is the most comprehensive of the publications. Even farmers who hire day laborers will benefit from much of the material in this book.

You can learn more at www.smallfarm.org and click on NESFI Bookstore. To order, email info@smallfarm.org, or phone 413-323-4531 (ask for the bookstore manager). a