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We have been in operation since 1996 and this will be our eighth year of offering apprenticeships. I've tried, to the best of my abilities, to offer folks a well-rounded understanding of all aspects of farm operations. Folks who have worked here in the past have gained experience in greenhouse management, planting, mechanical and hand cultivation, biological insect control, cover cropping strategies, harvest/post harvest handling, and marketing through the CSA model. The average work week (once we get going) often entails 10-hour days 5-6 days a week (last summer we managed to work only one Saturday over the course of the season). As for living arrangements, Interns have their own cabins and kitchen facilities. Although we cannot offer very much in the way of monetary compensation ($450/month), we also offer room and board. This amounts to around $300/month and there aren’t many opportunities to spend money out here anyhow.
As for us, there’s me, Mike Jacobs, my wife Malena Handeen, our daughter Hazel who is almost 8 years old, our 4 year old Arlo and Seth our field manager. All in all I'd say (hopefully honestly) that we're pretty laid back folks. So far we've had no problems with anyone who has worked here and we count most of them now as good friends. In the past I've always said that the work will be spread out fairly evenly between myself and the other folks who live here (i.e. don’t worry about getting stuck weeding the carrots all the time while I sit on the front porch in a white linen suit and drink mint julep!) however, this is not always possible. As our farm has grown I have found that there are things that only I really have the skills and knowledge to do... I have to do all the bookwork, accounting, machine repair, weekly newsletters and, until other folks' tractor skills develop, I have to do much of the tractor work (in addition, my insurance company is not to hot on other folks operating the tractors... but often we just ignore that!). In any case, there will be times when we won't all be working together. I would never ask anyone to do anything that I would not do myself. As much as possible we try and make things easy on our bodies and minds to minimize injury and burnout both of which are common on many farms.
Most workdays begin at dawn with a group breakfast. We then work until around noon when a two of us stop and make lunch. When it is hot we then take a little siesta (which is often spent in the coolness of the pond) until around 3PM. Work then continues until around 7-8PM when we stop for supper and call it quits. On Fridays two of us get up at around 4AM and make the metro delivery...typically we return home around 3PM and take off the rest of the day. When things are busy we might work on Saturdays (usually during planting) and we never work on Sundays (everyone needs at least 1 day of rest). Although the apprenticeship certainly entails quite a bit of hard work, thus far almost everyone has found it pretty darned enjoyable. There’s always lots of fun stuff going on during the weekends and the local community always seems to enjoy taking in our summer help.
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