Opportunities on our Farm
As any thriving organism, Don and Becky’s
Farm is nearly always in a state of growth and change. Part of this evolution
is the people we work with. Our farm couldn’t exist without our crew. We are
always interested in speaking to those who are drawn to this work and our
farm. We generally employ one or two people
year-round and about 7-10 people seasonally. Our busiest season runs from May
until late October. There’s never a day without an extremely varied schedule
of tasks. A typical day (if there is one): In harvest
season, we’d start the day near dawn picking greens for a few hours. Then
spend an hour or two washing and packaging them. Meanwhile, part of the crew
might begin preparing our subscription boxes and loading them on the truck.
Just after noon, the driver would begin his/her afternoon delivery route,
while other crewmembers hoe for an hour and then pick something like peppers
or tomatoes which are less effected by exposure to sun, and wash it during
the hottest part of late afternoon. Setting up the irrigation driplines before quitting time might complete the day. For many “Gringos”, one of the biggest
treats is working daily with our professional Mexican crew. These guys take
it up a notch! Fifteen year veteran, Erasmo, will
tease, entertain, and work the bejeebers off all
comers. His twenty-something year old son, Angel, makes his dad smile proudly
and the rest of us feel like antiques as he plows into tasks with such energy
as to make them seem effortless. We can usually make use of many of your
varied skills, from organizational and office/computer skills to mechanic and
welding skills. There are some repetitive tasks requiring bending and lifting
of as much as 50 pounds. These are part of farming and cannot be avoided. If
you are physically fit, ready to be careful and respectful of the land, and
get satisfaction of working hard, you’d fit right in. If you are considering farming as a
vocation, you will learn how a prosperous one functions here. The range of
crops and enterprises is very wide. The direct marketing system of
neighborhood delivered subscriptions is one of the largest and most efficient
operations of it’s kind in the country. We’ve never
had “interns” per se. We don’t see learning on the farm as a specialized venture, we are a working farm where everyone is always
learning. We like to encourage our helpers to stay
more than one season. There are so many tasks which are once-a-year that it
hardly makes sense to learn them at all if one is here just for the season.
And the organization of the farm is hard to understand fully until one sees
the entire seasonal cycle through a few times. It both makes the seemingly
endless admonitions to do tasks in prescribed ways rational, and gives the
satisfaction of observing the results of a job well done. What feeling the
young men have who worked here a few years ago--to see the apple trees which
they planted as high school boys bearing fine fruit as mature trees! Perhaps you've come upon this site anxious
to get on to the next step in a farming career. If you have extensive experience in growing
and marketing produce, and would be interested in a salaried position, we
would be very interested in speaking with you about longer term prospects. We offer competitive wages commensurate
with experience. We are fully covered by workman’s compensation and after
three years, employees are enrolled in an employer-funded SEP pension plan. If you would like to apply, send the application and we will arrange to speak with you.
You will need to first highlight, then copy the application. It can then be
pasted into a Word document, completed, and sent as an e-mail attachment. Or
you can paste the Word document into the body of an e-mail or print it on
paper and mail.
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