WENDELL — After 12 years as a social worker and five years living in Boston, Tessa White-Diemand had a hankering to get back to the chickens and turkeys on her family’s farm. There, she had collected and processed eggs as part of Sunday chores and dressed turkeys in autumn from the time she was at Swift River Elementary School.
“When I went off to college. I didn’t think I would ever have my career be on the farm,” the 34-year-old says, though she adds she felt lucky to grow up on the farm her grandparents started in 1936. “I tried different areas of the social work field, but I didn’t feel as fulfilled as I’d thought I would have been. There wasn’t that satisfaction of a job well done.”
But coming back to the farm raised lots of questions: would there be a spot for her? What would her responsibilities be? And how would she figure out how to start out? And even where to get her questions answered?
Fortunately, her mom, Anne Diemand Bucci, anticipated the need for her daughter to be able to network with other farmers who had returned. So Ben Clark, who’d returned to his family’s Deerfield fruit farm a dozen years ago after doing theater technical work in Boston and Providence, offered to talk with her about how he re-entered the world of farming.
“It was someone in my shoes who knew what I was going through,” White-Diemand says. “He was able to offer his perspective, and it was really helpful.”
But to help her — and other budding farmers — do the networking that’s really helpful, Bucci discussed with Jeff Budine, manager of the 100-year-old Greenfield Farmers Cooperative Exchange, the idea of launching a “next generation farmers” group.
The group’s first meeting in early March at the Federal Street store in Greenfield was snowed out, so when it was rescheduled there for March 21, Bucci and others expected the 80 or so people who’d originally signed up wouldn’t be likely to turn out for the new date.
“I put out 70 chairs, and we wound up having people standing,” said Budine. “It was pretty incredible.”
Almost as surprising was the number of older farmers attending because they had no “next generation” to continue their work and were looking for possible successors.
“It was just incredible, the wide array of people, from different generations looking to offer support, or looking to retire and wondering what to do to get the next generation to the plate,” recalls White-Diemand.
A survey of people attending gave the meeting’s organizers a pretty good idea of topics they’d like covered at future sessions: including grant-writing, financial planning, business planning and farm-stand merchandising.
For that reason, Melissa Adams of the state Department of Agricultural Resources will present a program on agricultural grants at the next meeting, Wednesday, April 11, at 6 p.m. at Franklin County Technical School.
People were asked to RSVP to NextGenerationOfFarmers@gmail.com by today if they plan to attend. There’s also a Facebook page, Next Generation of Farmers.
“A good majority” of the farmers who attended the recent session “don’t have a family to fall back on” for advice, says White-Diemand. “But they were interested in wanting to make a real go of this, and they don’t have a network of support.
Even for those, like her or like Clark, who have returned to their family farm, there may be good reasons why a network is helpful, explains Devon Whitney-Deal, who helps run a grant-supported technical assistance program specifically for farmers who have begun farming in the past 10 years.
“We know that farmers learning from other farmers is so valuable because they’re working with their peers,” she says, adding that often, “family dynamics” make it more helpful to have a peer network, especially when there’s a tension for the next generation of farmers who see an opportunity to change an aspect of a family farm for greater success and a reluctance from the older generation.
“It’s fantastic that Tessa and Annie are taking the lead and planning this,” Whitney-Deal says. “We think it’s very valuable, and we love being able to support it and help with whatever they need, as a partner, to help them be more sustainable on the farm and make that transition a successful one.”