Company description
Mace Chasm Farm is a diversified Livestock Farm. We rotationally graze Katahdin sheep, Devon cattle, Chickens, Turkeys, and Pigs in the eastern Adirondacks, by Lake Champlain.
We do our own added-value processing, and direct market the meats & eggs that we raise to a local customer base.
Meat cutting takes place in our on-farm Butcher Shop, which specializes in a variety of fresh cuts, fresh sausages, smoked meats, and dry cured meats. Our butcher shop is run by a crew of three here during the busy season. The farm chores and livestock care are managed by 2 people.
2019 will be our 7th year in production (time flies!), so we’re still building infrastructure & systems on the farm, but there is a solid foundation in place.
Farm owners are Asa Thomas-Train (age 36) and Courtney Grimes-Sutton (age 35), and we both work full-time on the farm alongside the rest of the crew. Asa's background is in Geography, Trail-building, and Stone Masonry. Court's background is in Farming, Metal Work, and Butchery. Asa grew up here and knows the mountains well. Court grew up in MA and moved up here from the Hudson Valley in 2009. We love it here.
Court runs the Butcher Shop and Asa manages the livestock out in the fields.
Our farm is part of an awesome community in the eastern Adirondacks, where small ag is becoming an important part of the economy. This region is very rural, mountainous, and beautiful.
Job description
This job has you outside in all the glorious weather taking care of livestock, practicing pasture management, and maintaining farm tools and infrastructure. Asa manages this realm, and the two of you will divide and conquer chores at the start of each day before moving on to whatever maintenance or project is up next on the list with however many hours remain in the work day.
Responsibilities of this position are;
- Morning livestock chore routine.
- Monitoring health of all livestock during chores.
- Moving fence - we use quicknets & polywire w/ a high tensile perimeter, and move the cattle & sheep daily to fresh paddocks. Pigs move to new forest paddocks monthly.
- Monitoring pasture growth to judge paddock size, plan rotations.
- Keeping the 'chore area' (where we store fencing & plumbing materials) and the farm 'wood/metal shop' clean and organized.
- Helping to maintain breeding records, planning ahead for breeding seasons.
- Loading animals onto the livestock trailer weekly - sometimes doing the driving.
- Unloading hay and grain deliveries when they come in - tracking inventory, adjusting orders.
- Keeping an eye on how things are working & making improvements whenever possible. Bringing ideas or problems to the table for brain-storming. Suggest changes, additions, subtractions, etc!
- Helping out with whatever projects are underway on the farm whenever possible.
- Covering one farmer's market each week.
We are looking for someone with organizational skills, motivation to make improvements and repairs, attention to detail, and solid follow through, including wrangling of all loose ends!
Any experience in tractor driving, livestock handling, chainsaw work, carpentry, record keeping, or any other relevant tasks are a plus!
Time frame; May/June through Nov/Dec. Beyond December, we can look at how it's going and whether you would like to stay on board.
We try to be flexible and accommodating with regards to days off and time with visitors, etc. July, August, and September are crush-time, and extra days off are harder to schedule than during other months. In this region's economy, we have to make almost all of our bread and butter during the summer markets.
This job is 5 days/week.
There is a lovely little Shepherd's Cabin on the farm that is available for housing, if you'd like to live on the farm. We can send pics of that.
Compensation
this position is: salaried, less than $50,000
Application instructions
This job expired on April 21, 2019
Deadline
no deadline