Extension agent blends education, entrepreneurship

When a friend told Patricia McGlynn in 2008 she should apply for the Flathead County extension agent job, McGlynn’s first question was: “Is there water there?”

She knew about the rather arid climate of the east side of the Big Sky State, and was pleased to learn this corner of Montana did indeed have plenty of rivers, lakes and streams — just like upstate New York where she grew up — not to mention some of the most beautiful scenery anywhere.

McGlynn wasn’t looking for a job when she heard about the Flathead County position. She had just accepted a position as coordinator of a new sustainable agriculture program at Cornell University, where she earned her Ph.D. in education.

Still, Montana was intriguing to her. When she read the job description calling for someone to help Flathead County residents identify entrepreneurial agriculture opportunities, she was all in. It was good-bye Cornell, hello Montana.

“I felt like it was written for me,” she said.

McGlynn has been a blur of activity here ever since. One the first visible signs of her leadership was a community garden that sprouted next to the courthouse. She heads the local Master Gardener program that teaches about 50 gardeners each year.

“Almost every garden center has sent people to these classes, even irrigation businesses,” she said. “Master gardeners are behind many of the community garden start-ups.”

McGlynn, 58, has been at the helm of several research trials for agricultural products aimed at enhancing market opportunities for local growers. She designed and conducted the cherry variety trial launched in 2010, and took a similar role in a recent cold hardy wine grape study. She’s been equally involved with a hops research trial that is underway, and a dark fruit study that began this year at Flathead Valley Community College.

On any given day McGlynn taps into the reservoir of her horticultural and agribusiness knowledge to help county residents identify weeds, plant diseases and insects. She’s the inspector for the Department of Agriculture’s weed-free hay program and the county’s private pesticide applicator coordinator.

McGlynn gives all kinds of educational seminars both locally and regionally, and last week led a group of Montana State University officials and regional farm leaders on a tour that included stops at the Agricultural Research Center in Creston and the hops trial plots near Whitefish.

It’s not a stretch to say all of life’s roads serendipitously led to McGlynn’s journey to the Flathead. Or that her love of gardening just might be hereditary.

Her grandfather was a truck farmer in New York, and when McGlynn was about 12 she started her own garden at her family home at the end of Cow Turd Alley. (The country road was so named because cows were trucked along the route to the nearby cheese factory.)

Raised in the heart of dairy country, McGlynn worked on a Guernsey farm as a youngster.

“I know rural,” she said. “I grew up with it all around me.”

It was no surprise when she earned an associate’s degree in floriculture after high school. She spent the next 24 years working at a garden center in Albany that was her husband’s family business.

“I loved it,” she recalled. “When customers came in needing help, I loved helping solve problems.”

After their marriage dissolved, McGlynn was at a jumping-off point in her life. She wanted to be a high school ag teacher, so she went back to school at age 41.

“I’m a teacher at heart,” she said. “I wanted to combine my horticulture experience with an education degree.”

McGlynn plowed through college, collecting her degree in agriculture business from the State University of New York at Cobleskill in 2001 and then her master’s in education at Cornell in 2004. By February 2005 she had completed her Ph.D. at Cornell, at age 48. Her dissertation was a topic dear to her heart: Public gardening and agricultural literacy.

While her two daughters were growing up, McGlynn ran a nonprofit “farm on wheels” that took animals into schools because many teachers had no agricultural knowledge to share with their elementary students. The program was so innovative at the time that she was featured on a national CBS news show.

“I tried to do everything I could so the kids could get an education,” McGlynn said, remembering the nonprofit’s small budget. “I did a lot with handicapped and autistic children.”

A blogger and regular contributor to Montana Woman magazine, McGlynn recently took her writing to a new audience. She was among 23 women selected among hundreds to write a chapter for a newly released book, “Unexpected Pathways: The Journey of Women in the Workforce.”

She wrote about the unanticipated twists and turns in her own life that have helped her grow and embrace new opportunities. McGlynn often has found literary inspiration at the water’s edge. She recalled observing a heron in a dried-up streambed one time. The bird was watching something, so she walked over to the pool of water to see a few fish trying to survive in just a couple of inches of water.

“If only those fish had been courageous enough to swim” with the rest to deeper water,” she remembers thinking. “Now they’re just lunch.”

That observation became a metaphor for her own life.

“It’s about having the courage to leave the group,” she said. “For me it was moving to Montana with my dog. When something pushes you out of the comfort zone, that’s when you grow.”

McGlynn has further plans for her writing that include self-publishing a book of inspirational bedtime stories for adults.

“I imagine it for audio books,” she said.

In her chapter of “Unexpected Pathways,” McGlynn candidly writes about the trials she has overcome. She thought a doctorate would be a guaranteed “ticket to anywhere,” but instead she faced financial hardship, working in a greenhouse by day and bartending by night. She wound up homeless and living with a friend for a time and contemplated filing for bankruptcy when she finally was offered a research assistant job at Cornell.

Because she has faced challenges throughout her life, and because she’s a teacher at heart, McGlynn readily shares her philosophy on life.

“Every day you have to make a choice,” she instructed. “You have to ask yourself, ‘Am I going to make the most of it?’”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.