Company description

Mountain Roots Produce is a small, diversified vegetable farm located in the Mancos Valley in Southwest Colorado. We are passionate about soil health, agricultural policy and our community. We enjoy growing produce for our 100 member CSA, wholesale accounts, and our farm stand in the region.

Our Mission: Produce high quality and reasonably priced vegetables for our local and regional communities while improving soil health and being water resilient in our high desert climate.

Internship description

Job Description, Duties and Responsibilities: Farm Intern will participate in many aspects of the daily farm operations including, but not limited to the following: seed starting, transplanting, irrigation, weeding, greenhouse management, harvesting, post-harvest handling, record keeping, CSA distribution and Farm Stand setup and sales.

Throughout the growing season, the Intern will develop the following skills/knowledge:

• Basic knowledge on how to seed, plant, care for and harvest many of the crops that we produce on our farm. In addition to hands-on learning, we have a crop manual to share with Intern(s) detailing this information.

• How to host CSA Pickups and communicate with CSA Members on a weekly basis.

• How to set up and run a weekly Farm Stand, and make deliveries to wholesale accounts.

• Understand various ways to extend the growing season, (tunnels, row cover, seeding dates) and how storage crops (potatoes, carrots, beets, etc) can provide a way to continue produce sales into the winter months.

• Intro into soil health, cover cropping, irrigation methods, weed management, food safety, managing a farm through drought and marketing.

• Each season brings different challenges (pests, disease, weather) and the Intern(s) will experience and learn from those challenges with us.

• And, hopefully a love for farming. As a farmer who never thought about agriculture as a career growing up, and who discovered my love for this work through an internship, I want to provide the same opportunity for others.

**We do not provide housing at the farm. Intern and Farm Crew Members are responsible for securing their own housing outside of the farm and have reliable transportation to and from the farm.**

Hours/Growing Season: We are looking for one intern (at 3 x 8 hour days per week) to join our team during the 2021 growing season (May-October).

Meals: We will eat lunch together as a team on workdays made with ingredients from the farm.

Compensation: Paid hourly at 13.00/hour

Qualifications: No farm experience is required, this is an entry level position. Due to the very demanding physical nature of farm work, comfort with kneeling, squatting, heavy lifting, and repetitive tasks is a must. Applicants will need to be able to lift 50 lbs and be able to work in all types of weather (snow, heat, rain, wind, etc).
*Please note: Applicants must be available to begin work the first week of May and commit to staying through the growing season which ends the last week of October.

• Passionate about agriculture and have a positive attitude.

• Contemplating a career in farming/agriculture.

• Have good communication skills. Comfortable asking questions.

• Team player but also able to work independently.

• Responsible and reliable.

• Must be able to follow directions and receive feedback/critiques.

• Self motivated, observant, good with deadlines and time management.

• Valid drivers license (to make deliveries and attend farmers market) and reliable source of transportation from off-farm housing.

COVID Protocols: Our farm follows and abides by all current CDPHE COVID-19 Guidelines. As essential workers, we take the health and safety of our farm crew and our customers very seriously.

Compensation

this position is: salaried, $7.25/hr to $15/hr

Application instructions

Deadline

March 15, 2021