“I’ll preach networking ‘til the day I die.”

A familiar component at most Michigan Farm Bureau conferences are district meetings, where all the attendees from each of our 12 districts gather, usually near the top of the agenda, to meet, greet, chat through priorities and in general get on the same page. It’s simple geography that the farther north you go, the smaller these groups get as they reflect thinner and thinner populations of members.

Antrim, Charlevoix, Cheboygan, Emmet, Otsego and Presque Isle counties comprise District 11, and the room always feels larger than necessary. But that may work in their favor, because who isn’t more comfortable in a small group than a large one?

Sitting in with their delegation at the recent Young Farmer Leaders Conference, their sparse population belied their engagement in the conversation. Taking the leading was D-11’s representative on the state Young Farmer committee, Antrim County President Nate McGuire, with his wife Chelsea tapping in here and there.

The action followed a familiar pattern: A slow start, then a steady ramp-up leading to full-blown engagement. Even the predictability of that pattern, though, didn’t dim the intensity of the exchange; I had landed in a great group of young hearts and minds.

Nate welcomed his group of mostly first-timers and quickly opened the floor for comments on the nature and value of what they could expect for the next day and a half.

This was not first rodeo for Belle Buhr from Cheboygan (well, Riggsville), who was sitting across from me and who blurted out eight words so perfectly golden I used them for the headline above: “I’ll preach networking ‘til the day I die.” 

I would’ve hugged her but was too busy lurching for pen and paper to scribble it down. It wasn’t really what she said, but the earnest, direct way she announced it. She continued from there, adding more layers of detail for the newbies in the room, but my purposes required only those eight words.

After years of struggling to understand what anyone even means by “networking,” I’ve finally learned from folks like Belle (and you) that the simple exchange of information among a critical mass of gathered farmers is a huge component of Farm Bureau membership value. 

Not only did Belle clearly understand its value, but she quickly convinced her peers, who followed her lead into an open exchange about the value of membership.

Another highlight came from one-year members Taylor and Karlee Kowalewsky from Presque Isle County. Taylor works at a Sackett Potato facility outside Hawks — and he is one quiet dude — but young Karlee took to the conversation comfortably, even putting on the table an issue too-often overlooked in our hyper-connected age: rural isolation. 

It’s as old as agriculture itself, but rails, roads, phones and the internet have all torn big chunks out of the isolation that once plagued your predominantly rural, largely solitary vocation. (Could be worse.)

It’s well known that many members see our conferences as welcome, if brief, reprieves from the grind back home. Karlee took it a step further and suggested (wisely, I thought) more programming aimed at — or exchanged between — farm wives and especially young mothers who long for greater connectivity with each other as much as their farming husbands do.

Her suggestion sparked a lively conversation among the group that was clearly empathetic and supportive of the idea.

There also came a breakthrough in cracking open an issue that challenges many county Farm Bureaus: Communication. This is where Nate’s wife Chelsea McGuire had welcome news to share — that she’d eagerly take on the responsibility of administrating a districtwide Facebook page for the whole region atop the Lower Peninsula. 

Especially in regions of relatively low farmer numbers, district-level collaboration is often a smart approach to working around sparse human resources. 

It wouldn’t be until I was sorting through my own mental clutter on the drive home that I’d realize that the level of attentive, thoughtful engagement among District 11’s small group actually set the tone and pace for the full day ahead.