Company description

Olivette Farm is a three-acre sustainable, four-season vegetable farm located 7 miles north of Asheville, NC. Our main focus is intensive production of salad greens, microgreens, root vegetables, and specialty produce for chefs. We also have an acre of blueberries, and a small Asian pear orchard. We attend multiple weekly farmers markets, sell to local restaurants and have a CSA.

Job description

Olivette Farm seeks a driven and experienced full time Farm Manager to continue to grow the vision of Olivette Farm through developing and maintaining infrastructure, soil building, production of crops, marketing, sales, and developing meaningful relationships with homeowners within the Olivette community.

Olivette is a 346-acre planned community and historic farm, located along the French Broad River, just 7 miles from downtown Asheville. An agrihood community, Olivette is home to a vibrant vegetable farm. The community also provides seven acres of riverfront beach, a large private river island, several miles of walking trails, community-wide geothermal heating and cooling, community gardens, a pavilion and a fire-circle amphitheater, Little Free Libraries, a bike-sharing program, and fiber-to-home broadband internet access.

Responsibilities:

• Management of 3 acres of vegetable fields using organic practices.
• Development of sales plan and building local market relationships in Asheville and within the Olivette Community.
• Maintenance and development of important infrastructure including greenhouse, caterpillar tunnels, fencing, irrigation, and wash station.
• General maintenance of all equipment including tractor, BCS, mower, Gator, farm truck, weedeaters, chainsaws and associated implements.
• General farm tasks including, seed starting, cultivating, irrigation, disease and pest control, trellising, harvesting, and post harvest handling.
• Marketing and delivery of produce to farmers markets, restaurants, and CSA members.
• Management of designated vegetable fields with knowledge of organic soil fertility methods.
• Administrative tasks including record keeping, crop planning, budgeting, goal setting, newsletters, social media updates.
• Work with the Olivette event planner to plan farm tours, educational workshops and farm-to-table dinners.
• Manage farm employees and volunteers.
• Build key relationships in the community including restaurants, local agricultural organizations, extension agency, CSA and farmers market customers.
• Identify and procure grants.
• Ability to balance the production of crops, health of the land, farm brand marketing, and keeping a neat and beautiful farm appearance.
• Serve as the face of the farm in all communications and marketing.

Qualifications:

• At least two years of vegetable management experience in organic or naturally grown production.
• Self motivation, excellent problem solving skills and an ability to accomplish tasks without outside assistance.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience working with restaurants, CSA members and farmers markets.
• Ability to walk, bend, squat and/or kneel for hours at a time in all weather conditions.
• Ability to occasionally lift up to 50lbs.
• Solid understanding of efficient farming systems, irrigation, basic carpentry.
• Understanding of farm business skills including budgeting, profit projecting, crop planning, record keeping and marketing.
• Proficiency in Word, Excel, Instagram, Facebook and Squarespace.
• Valid Driver’s License
• Applicant must be extremely organized, task oriented, and have superb attention to detail.

Job Information:

• Olivette is seeking a long term commitment, but we require a minimum commitment of 1 year.
• Average work week is 50-60 hours including weekend work as needed for farmers markets, tours, greenhouse management and/or irrigation.

• Salaried position based on experience.
• Ideal start date is between November 1st through the 15th.
• Housing is not available at this time. Candidate must be willing to locate housing nearby.
• The farm is equipped with a complete inventory of the tools and equipment needed to make the farm successful.
• The Farm Manager will meet weekly with the farm owners to discuss budgeting, goals and the overall state of the farm.

Compensation

this position is: salaried, varies DOE, $38,000.00 - $45,000.00

Application instructions

Deadline

no deadline