Company description

Ivy Creek Family Farm grows vegetables, flowers, berries and shiitake mushrooms using organic and ecologically sound practices. Located 25 minutes from Asheville in the beautiful Big Ivy valley, we sell our produce to several large restaurants, at two tailgate markets, to our CSA members, and at our farm stand. Anna and Paul Littman began the farm twelve years ago, bringing backgrounds of landscape architecture, nonprofit management, and plant and mushroom study to their farming goals.

We work with a skilled team of three-four people to farm our six-acres of produce and to process the vegetables post harvest. We utilize two Kubota tractors, a disk, a spader, a bed raiser, plastic mulch layer, and other tools to prepare our fields and beds. In addition to field grown crops, we grow in high tunnels and caterpillar tunnels. Our expansion plan includes building more caterpillar tunnels on our farm in 2020 and 2021.

We grow high quality vegetables at Ivy Creek. Several times a year we give tours to chefs who buy our produce. On these culinary tours, chefs take inspiration from the tomatoes growing in the hoop houses and the herbs that have gone to flower. We stock our farm stand daily. Neighbors tell us that they don’t plan the meals until they stop at our refrigerator to see what's fresh. We have donated thousands of pounds of produce to those in need. We are proud to have restored a piece of land that we use to bring fresh produce and authentic experiences to our community.

Katie Button of Curate describes our farm saying, "As a restaurant owner and chef, I am heavily dependent on the local agricultural economy, as are my counterparts across the region. The Ivy Creek Family Farm team is exemplary in their farming practices, ethos and leadership abilities within our community, setting new standards in how relationships are built between the farming community and our local dining establishments."

Job description

Calling all aspiring farmers! Want to come farm with a fun, dedicated team on a beautiful farm 20 easy minutes from Asheville? At Ivy Creek Family Farm we have one position open for an assistant farmer. The new staff member will join the current farming team to grow thousands of pounds of fresh, delicious produce.

Activities the assistant farmer will participate in:

• Seed new plants in the propagation house and care for seedlings
• Harvest 40-50 different crops-including seasonal vegetables, flowers, small fruit, and mushrooms
• Work in the shiitake mushroom yard
• Prepare the soil and beds for planting including laying compost and laying landscape fabric
• Plant seedlings and direct seed crops
• Cultivate, weed, and mulch plants and shrubs
• Apply row cover to avoid pest pressure and protect plants from extreme weather
• Wash and pack crops for CSA, market, and wholesale
• Sell at market
• and more!

Assistant Farmers have the opportunity to take on leadership roles within specific areas of the farm including market lead, flower production, mushroom production, propagation house management, harvest team leader, and more.

Assistant Farmers can expect long days in the sun and rain, hard physical work, and hours and days doing repetitive tasks. We hope applicants will have at least one year of experience working on a farm.


Education
We do weekly farm walks with staff and also offer periodic classes on subjects that interest the current staff members. Past classes have included: propagation house management, shiitake mushroom production, business management, cover cropping, irrigation systems and even hands-on lessons in things like changing the oil in a car and tractor maintenance.

Assistant farmers connect with the community and have additional learning opportunities through Ivy Creek's membership to CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training). As members, our staff are invited to participate in a series of monthly farm visits and workshops around Western North Carolina.


Start Date
Apprentices can start working and living at Ivy Creek anytime between February 1st and March 15th. Our hope is that apprentices will work with us at least through August, 2020. We also offer opportunities for multi-year employment.


Compensation
Compensation includes $750-$900 a month depending on experience, a private room in our staff house (plus a share kitchen and bathroom with one other individual), farm vegetables, and a stipend for crew lunches.

Compensation

this position is: salaried, varies DOE, $750.00 - $900.00

Application instructions

Deadline

February 01, 2020