Growing food at a community scale is a deeply honorable profession that is becoming more valuable by the season, yet one with tight profit margins and little room for errors. It’s important for beginning farmers to be prepared for the wide and wild diversity of challenges and opportunities that can present themselves in a single growing season.   

There are many robust undergrad and online/virtual programs out in the world for folks like you to learn the basic theories and approaches to farming. So that is not what we have focused our work on at this time. Instead, we have set up our community-scaled production farm as something more akin to an apprenticeship program, designed for those who have already completed some form of academic training and are now ready to practice the farming skills you can’t learn on-line or in a classroom…critical thinking, decision-making under pressure, prioritization of tasks, customer relations, strategic planning for the long-term health of your farm, and more.

The application process is competitive, and the training requires a serious commitment on the part of those who accept a place in the program (only 1-2 will be placed in 2025). If you are accepted into the program, on April 7th you become a 40 hr/week employee, paid at WA State minimum wage ($16.66/hour), with a list of expectations and responsibilities. You will work with staff to prepare the soil, organize materials and supplies, fine-tune the equipment and infrastructure, and finalize the crop and marketing plans for the year. You will continue throughout the year, progressively learning more about the implementation and management of a growing season. This work evolves into a deeply participatory season of cultivation, seeding, transplanting, weeding, problem-solving, harvesting, distributing, research, and evaluating. You will be expected to participate fully in all aspects of managing the OFS farm, under the supervision of our Farm Manager and Field Supervisor. Successful completion of the program involves the creation of your own farm business plan and a presentation of that plan to the community.