Urban Micro-Farm Internship

Hi all, I am sending this message to announce a call-out for an intern (or two) for my urban micro-farm for this season, and hoping that folks can post it to their listservs, websites, and other media of dissemination to food-oriented folks. This will be my second year running a market garden from my backyard garden and teaching food production courses based on Permaculture and small-scale organic agriculture techniques and skills.  Last year I delivered a veggie box to four households per week, delivered on my bike.  This year I am adding outdoor mushroom beds and a small greenhouse to the operation, and as well as my regular delivery will be offering organic veggie, herb, and edible flower starts in the spring and mushrooms in the fall.  I am also involved in an effort to organize with others who are doing similar small-scale urban farming, and several other grassroots food security efforts in and around Vancouver. I am looking for someone(s) interested in hands-on learning one or two days per week from March or April until October, or some portion thereof.  The intern(s) will help in the garden, as well as with the business aspects of things and some networking and organizing work.  I cannot offer pay at this time, but am dedicated to creating a fair exchange for the interns’ work; I am committed to providing real training and instruction in organic gardening, Permaculture design, grassroots organizing and business skills within a community-based economy framework.  The tasks and training will be tailored to the intern(s)’s interests and skills and we will work together to create a list of goals and a learning plan.  The skills which will be developed include (but are not limited to):

• Permaculture Design
• Organic gardening, with a focus on techniques for intensive urban food production
• Greenhouse work
• Mushroom cultivation
• Research and problem-solving, solution planning and execution
• Business skills, including bookkeeping, business planning, marketing, customer relations
• Economic localization strategies
• Grassroots food security organizing
• Consensus-based decision making and self-organization

Interested folks need not be experienced in these areas, but should be ready to set goals for what they want to learn.  We will work from within a feminist, anti-oppression framework which demands the ability to be self-reflexive.  This means the willingness to recognize that we’ve all been taught to hold assumptions that are oppressive to ourselves and others, and we are all responsible in everything we do for helping ourselves and each other let go of these assumptions in a supportive, gentle and loving way. The Farmhouse recognizes that we are on unceded land, and honours the Musqueam Nation on whose traditional territory we are located. Anyone interested in finding out more about the internship opportunity should contact me at farmhousefarm@gmail.com with a quick outline of their background and what they are interested in learning.  Expressions of interest should be received by February 28th.