Stone's Throw Farm

I got an email the other day from Orion Grassroots Network about new job and internship listings. It brought back a ton of good memories of my first internship at Caretaker Farm in Massachusetts — an internship that I found online almost exactly 3 years ago.

The day we pulled up plastic mulch at Caretaker Farm.

When I first arrived at Caretaker, I didn’t know a radish from a rutabaga, as I believe one of my references told Don, the farmer (thanks, Jeff!). When I left at the end of October, I could plan a week of distribution to 250 farm members, milk a cow, cook a meal from scratch for 5 1/2 hungry farmers in an hour, can tomatoes, hand-weed for 9 hours in one day, pull a garden cart of pumpkins up a hill without breaking a sweat … and it was uphill both ways, let me tell ya. My point is, I learned a ton during those 7 months, and I had a great time. I wish every aspiring farmer could afford to do an internship, because taking that intern position was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Me at the Food Farm. Photo by Karisa Centanni, To Milk and Honey.

If you”re at all interested in learning about farming in the Duluth/Superior area, the Food Farm near Wrenshall is looking for an intern for the 2010 growing season. The Food Farmers are some of the most skilled and knowledgeable farmers I know, and they’re more than generous about sharing their knowledge with interns and other farmers. Just as important, they’re incredibly kind and are somehow able to guide even the most novice of novices so he or she can make a valuable contribution to the farm work and feel good about it.

Another great option that I learned about through Orion is this internship at Philadelphia Community Farm, northeast of the Twin Cities. Besides being a cool farm in general, PCF also helped create a land trust called Standing Cedars Community Land Conservancy. The listing says they’re looking for someone with “a keen interest in agriculture and ecological restoration and in living in a community context.” If that’s you, I say go for it.