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Riverhill Farm offers up to four internships each season to individuals wishing to learn the practical skills of farming or for individuals simply wishing to experience work on a farm. We offer both a formal and an informal learning experience, with daily hands-on work, discussion, and special projects for those interested in a more in-depth learning experience. Special projects are crop-specific to encourage detailed learning about the cultural requirements of main crop and specialty vegetables and fruits to be grown successfully. Special projects are also environmental, either of an intern’s design or as part of ongoing environmental projects at the farm, to ensure that each intern gains a greater awareness of farming with sensitivity to the natural environment on which all farming depends.
Riverhill Farm is highly diversified and grows intensively on more than four acres. We sell our products both retail and wholesale, through our CSA, at our farm’s farmstand, at local Farmers’ Markets, and to restaurants and a locally-owned grocery store. Summers are hot but dry, and temperatures normally range from the mid-80’s to the 90’s, with one or two heat waves during which temperatures may exceed 100 degrees for a few days. At our elevation (2500’), nights are almost always cool and pleasant. The days are long but pleasurable, with interns and employees expected to start work at 8:00 a.m. The day generally ends for interns and employees at 5:00 p.m., except for those who join us at a once a week evening Farmers’ Market, which usually closes at 9:00 p.m. For most employees and interns, the work week is Tuesday through Saturday.
As a learning experience for interns and employees, the season is roughly divided into four periods during which the character of the work is dominated by certain tasks, even if the same tasks are repeated during other times of the season. The early season consists of fertilization and soil amending, tillage, care of transplants, seeding, planting, and cultivating. During this period you will also learn about irrigation set-up and requirements for successful drip and overhead irrigation. There are pole bean and cucumber trellises to construct. You will also help to care for cool season plants that were planted before your arrival at the farm. These include peas, salad crops, greens, fava beans, strawberries, and more.
The season then progresses into plant maintenance, fertilizer side-dressing or foliar feeding, mulching, monitoring for pests, extensive weeding and cultivation, trellising tomatoes, pruning cucumbers, and some early picking of produce as our picking season gets underway. Our CSA usually gets underway and our farmstand opens in mid-June, and you’ll get a very good sense of what’s involved in making a small farm economically viable from the standpoint of serving our subscribers and farmstand customers. We’ll still be planting and weeding and setting up more irrigation lines during this period, but we’ll usually be close to fully planted at this point.
At that point we gradually shift into mostly picking and packing, keeping up with hundreds of pounds of gorgeous produce, filling custom orders from restaurants, grocery stores and individual customers, going to Farmers’ Markets with an overfull load, and filling CSA boxes three times a week. We’ll also be drying and canning surplus produce. You’ll gain a broad appreciation for the requirements of a diversified marketing plan and strategies to ensure that the produce that is grown reaches its markets.
By September, the days are noticeably shorter and cooler at night, and many of the plants are slowing down. Cool season plants start to perk up, and the mix of veggies starts to include more greens and salad again. Peppers are in their prime (we grow more than twenty varieties!), and we spend a great deal of time just gawking at the beauty of the place. Revived by the cooler temperatures, stamina returns and we’re comfortable in the pleasure of another successful season.
In order to successfully cover crop our fields for the coming winter, we have to strip the fields of all plants, trellising and irrigation equipment by the beginning of October. Many of the plants are still loaded with produce, so we hold our annual Gleaning Day and invite our customers and the community to come pick their own. Payment for produce is by donation, and it’s a great event. We delight in watching families work their way down the rows and take great pleasure in giving back to the community that supports us. The conclusion of Gleaning Day signals the final push to clear the fields, and than we return to tillage and the seeding of the cover crop, ideally by the middle of October. Most work is done for the season by the end of October.
Individuals wishing to apply for an internship at Riverhill Farm should contact us with a letter by email and let us know your background, your interest in farming and spending the season at this farm, and what you would like to get out of the experience. If you want to come here as part of an academic program and require course credit, please let us know what the requirements for course credit are for you. We will be happy to try to meet those requirements as necessary.
An internship is free of charge. There is no stipend for interns. There may be limited housing at the farm, but we attempt to place most if not all interns in suitable housing in the community. You will have access to all the produce grown at the farm, unless it is in short supply and needed to fill our CSA boxes (rare!).
After we’ve reviewed your application letter, we will want to talk to you over the phone as well. It is best if you can visit us at the farm, meet and talk with us to make sure that the experience will suit you, but we recognize that that may be difficult for someone coming from a distance.
We enjoy the experience of opening up our farm and work life to people who want to learn about sustainable agriculture and contribute to our community. Although the work can get pretty intense at times, we always appreciate a fresh and eager perspective and the good times that our interns bring, and find great satisfaction in the possibility that we’re contributing in some way to an experience that may cause one more person to dedicate themselves to their own new farm! |
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