Golden Tree Farm, Salt Spring Island, BC
4 Fun Filled Positions Available From: March 16 – October 16 2015 for
Motivated, Hard Working, Intelligent, Excited, Revolutionary
Individuals WELCOME TO APPLY!!
APPLICATION DEADLINE: DECEMBER 21, 2014
If we feel lik eyou would be a g
ood fit, WE WILL CONTACT YOU BY DEC 25
to schedule an interview.
APPRENTICESHIP INCLUDES
• $500 month stipend, plus room and abundant seasonal board of farm
/garden produce ( 3 positions available)
• OR $750 month, plus room and abundant seasonal board of farm/ garden
produce for the GARDEN APPRENTICE (1 position available) This person
must have prior work experience growing food at scale…please see job
description below
• Permaculture Design Course and Certificate taught by Brandon Bauer
and Erin Harper, taught over the course of the season
• 3 field trips, including Farm Tours of other increadible farms
throughout Salt Spring Island
WHO WE ARE:
We are Adam & Rebecca Gold and our two young sons Moe and Elijah. We
acquired our farmland in 2009, and have been working our butts off
ever since. This is the second farm we have started, and are still
involved in stewarding our original project.
Rebecca has a degree in environmental agriculture, is a master
gardener, and has 14 years experience working in the “fields” of
organic agriculture, permaculture and rural homesteading. Every year
she works hard at growing and preserving huge amounts of scrumptious
food to share with her family and close friends. She adores growing
flowers and wild-crafting nettles. She makes herbal medicine and
practices kundalini yoga. She loves taking long walks and listening to
the bird sing. Lately her main passion is raising her babies.
Adam has a degree in business and creatively weaved his education and
his passion’s for rural homesteading and orcharding into a successful
and meaningful career. He also has a passion for Fungi, and seven
years ago this passion inspired him to create Salt Spring Exotic
Mushrooms, which grows and distills the highest quality medicinal
mushrooms. Besides riding on his tractor, his passions include
drinking gourds of yerba mate, brewing hard cider, jamming on guitar
and dancing around the living room to Ska music with his son’s.
Moe and Eli were both born on the farm, and have spent most everyday
living and breathing the good energy we cultivate here. Moe is three
years old. His main passions include cuddling his parents and baby
brother, trucks & trains of all colors and sizes, the sand box, riding
on the tractor with Papa and playing his drum. He is also a true
strawberry coinsurer.
Eli just turned one. He loves to eat, and nurse and eat some more. He
also really loves to watch his parents cook meals…there may be a theme
developing here, the next in a line of food aficionados’. As well, he
loves riding on his moms back in the sling, watching the farm and the
colors & sounds of the seasons.
We also share parcels of our land with other motivated people who are
agriculturally and spiritually oriented. You will have the opportunity
to work with and learn from them as well. There will be days when most
members of our small farm community work together on shared tasks.
You will also have the privledege of studying with Brandon Bauer and
Erin Harper who will headline and co-conspire to provide you with an
exciting permaculture education.
Erin Harper grew up in Vancouver and has been living on Salt Spring
for 11 years. She studied Environmental Science at SFU (2000),
Ecological Gardening and Permaculture at Linnaea Farm on Cortes Island
(2001), studied agri-food business entrepreneurship with Lifecycles in
Victoria (2002) and has been practicing various aspects of
regenerative living ever since. She live in an “unintentional
community”, grows and preserves much of her own food and practices
natural building techniques. She save seeds for Salt Spring Seeds,
organizes Seedy Saturdays, and has volunteered in India with Fertile
Ground East West Sustainability Network. Most recently she am
researching the monetary system and promoting discussion on Sacred
Economics.
Brandon Bauer is a permaculture superhero. He teaches courses all over
Vancouver island, and the gulf islands. As well he designs and
installs permaculture / edible landscapes for private homes, small
farms, and green developments. He just got back from a 5 week tour of
east Africa where he helped install permaculture lanscapes fro NGOs
and schools. He planed something like 7500 trees!! Right now he is
busy building his own, off- the- grid-natural -building home/teaching
facility on our farm. He loves to eat home grown meat, drink hoppy
beer and lay low with his son Nico and dog Rue.
WHAT WE DO:
We steward a 30-acre Organic Family Farm located on St. Mary’s Lake,
on Salt Spring Island B.C. Over the past few years we have installed
an 8-acre orchard including European Pears, Asian Pears, Heritage and
Current Apples, Prune Plums, Japanese Plums, Figs, Cherries and
Persimmons. We have installed two acres of Blueberries.
We also grow medicinal mushrooms for distillation, including Reishi,
Maitake and Shiitake. We have pigs, chickens, goats and kitty cats.
Commercially we grow garlic, blueberries, raspberries, rhubarb,
loganberries and strawberries as well as specialty vegetables for our
farm stand and wholesale contracts.
We grow a large sustenance garden for ourselves, where we produce and
preserve much of our own food and seeds. We steward this special
property with its estuaries, forest patches and spiritual spaces.
We also share space on our farm with a commercial permaculture nursery
(Entelechi/Brandon Bauer http://www.permaculturebc.com)
WHO YOU ARE:
• One of four people who have a variety of skills, whom can be a part
of our farm team for 6 ½ months. Workdays are Monday-Friday 8 hr days.
During high season we may rotate working Saturdays.
• People who have some basic “hard” skills under their belt (such as
agriculture, carpentry, child care, landscaping, mechanics, baking,
etc…) and are keen to learn more. We will be putting a team together
of diverse people, so we can skill share and support one another.
• You must be hard working and willing to do repetitive tasks for
hours a day, months at a time.
• You must be physically strong.
• You must be self-motivated, open minded and kind.
• We will only apprentice with people who have previous experience in
agriculture/ horticulture or carpentry!!!. Working on a farm can be
hard and not often glamorous, but it is deeply meaningful and with the
right attitude, can be lots of fun!
WHAT YOU WILL DO:
Three people will be working with Adam throughout the week. They will
be apprenticing under a motivated and successful small-farm- farmer
and gain the skills they need to continue in the field of agriculture
or landscaping. Tasks will include animal husbandry, orchard care,
compost tea brewing and application, small carpentry/ construction,
planting, harvesting and weeding, tractor maintenance, irrigation,
mushroom culture, landscape care, road care, weed-whacking, cover
cropping and more. You will be spending most of your days outside in
the field. Some days will be spent repairing and maintaining equipment
and farm infrastructure.
One person will work under Rebecca’s guidance, two mornings a week.
The rest of time you will be working on your own as our garden
apprentice. You will be spending 4 – 5 days a week (not including the
permaculture day) maintaining our sustenance garden as well as our
small commercial annual vegetable garden. You will be stewarding
approximately 1.5 acres. You will be in charge of the nursery work,
seeding schedule & planting, maintaining the harvest and stocking the
farm stand. One day a week, you will have the support of the rest of
the team in the garden, to work on the larger tasks including bed
prep, transplanting, and major weeding. You will also have support in
the summer on our large harvest days. This apprenticeship position is
for someone who has worked in some professional capacity growing
annual vegetables at scale. You must be motivated to work on your own
(although you are never alone in a garden.) Further, you must be
organized to manage the ebb and flow of annu
al production, and able to work one on one with Rebecca who will
assist you in gaining a mastery of organic, annual production.
You will also have the amazing opportunity to receive your
Permaculture Design Certificate with Brandon Bauer and Erin Ann
Harper. 13 days will be put aside throughout the season to have
classroom teaching of the PDC and then in-field supplementary hands on
education.
All apprentices will live together in a small, beautiful cabin on our
land, in the woods. You will be responsible for caring for your own
space i.e. cleaning, cooking, etc. You will each have private bedrooms
and will share a comfortable and fully functional kitchen/living room
and bathhouse.
Throughout the season you will gain enough skills to comfortably and
creatively maintain our collective kitchen garden and supply
yourselves with ample continual harvests. We grow abundant greens,
scrumptious solanaceas, and potatoes of all functions, delicious
squashes and so much more!! You will receive a stipend each month as
well as access to eggs and some allotment berries. We will also supply
you with oats, rice and lentils. You will be responsible for
purchasing the rest of your food. There will be minimal electricity, a
propane stove/oven a wood- burning stove for heat and hot showers.
Spring:
• Seed Starting/ Transplanting
• Potato Planting
• Strawberry Planting
• Fence building for animal rotation (Birds)
• Orchard Care
• Weeding, Mulching, Cover crop
• Animal Care (Meat Birds and Laying Hens)
• Compost Tea
• Landscape Care
• Perimeter Fence mending
• Vegetable garden
Summer:
• Strawberry Harvest
• Blueberry Harvest
• Garlic Harvest
• Wedding, Mulching, Cover crop
• Orchard Care
• Animal Care
• Compost Tea
• Landscape Care
• Fire-wood Harvesting
Fall:
• Potato Harvest
• Garlic Planting
• Seed Saving
• Fence moving for animal rotation (pigs)
• Orchard Harvesting
• Cider Making
• Animal Harvesting (cow)
• Farm (field and building) Clean-up
• Weeding, Mulching, Cover crop
• Landscape Care
ARE YOU INTERESTED?
If you think this apprenticeship would enrich your life, please
contact us by filling out and emailing the application below
Email your answers to:
rebeccasunshine5@gmail.com
We will contact you by December 15 if we are interested in a Skype /
phone interview.
Please be honest! We are forming a team and need a diversity of
passionate people.
~~~~~~~~~~~
APPLICATION QUESTIONS
Why are you interested in an apprenticeship with us?
Who are you interested in apprenticing under? (Adam or Rebecca)
Have you ever been involved in an internship or apprenticeship in the
past? If so what?
What are your goals for the season? (please be specific)
What specific skills can you offer to our team?
Are you better at working alone, one on one, or in a group?
What is your background knowledge or experience in agriculture,
horticulture and/or permaculture?
What experience do you have that will help prepare you for living on
an island, in a close-knit community, where everyone is working and
living in close quarters in a rustic, outdoor setting?
How do you best communicate?
How are you best communicated with?
Do you perceive any challenges that will come up for you? If so what?
What is the most fun thing you’ve done in the last year?
Tell us about the most exciting thing you learned in the past year and
how you learned it.
State three interesting and unique things about yourself.
What is your favorite kind of music? / Is there any music you cannot stand?
What is your favorite thing to cook?
What is your astrological sign?
Are you on any medication?
Do you have any physical limitations?
Will you be leaving anyone significant behind to join our program?
Please list 2 work related references and 1 character references, with
both phone and email contacts.
~~~~~~~~~~~
(Note, if you are offered a placement we will ask for a general police
background check)