Company description
Mace Chasm Farm is a livestock farm, tree nursery, and butcher shop. We graze Devon cattle, chickens, turkeys, and pigs in the eastern Adirondacks near Lake Champlain on about 130 acres. Our Butcher Shop processes the meats we raise here, and direct markets our meats & eggs to a local customer base through farmers markets, our farm store, and custom orders. We produce a full gamut of fresh cuts, ground meats, fresh sausages, smoked meats, pates, broths, cooking fats, and dry cured meats. The foods we produce and sell are real dang good, and do our team proud.
2026 will be MCF's 13th year in production. Some of our ag goals on top of our basic production work include; tree planting for silvopasture implementation, expansion of the tree nursery, ongoing pasture improvement, and chipping away at a list of infrastructural upgrades.
MCF tends to be run by a crew of 5-7 farmers and butchers - the number of peeps shifting a bit based on PT or FT preferences within the team. 2 farmers tend to manage the work in the fields, while 3-4 people operate the butcher shop, with a PT role for tree nursery work in the mix. Some of us can step between enterprises, which adds resilience to the whole picture.
Farm owners are Asa Thomas-Train (age 43) and Courtney Grimes-Sutton (age 42), and we both work full-time in the operation. Asa's pro background is in Farming, Geography, Trail-building, and Stone Masonry. Court's pro background is in Farming, Metal Work, and Butchery. Asa grew up here, Court in central MA.
Court manages the butcher shop and tree nursery, while Asa manages our work with livestock.
Job description
We're looking for a livestock farmer!
This job has you out in the fields in all the glorious weather, doing the variety of work associated with caring for livestock. This work is often solitary, but you're coordinating as needed with Asa and/or other co-workers for tasks that are best done with more hands.
The strengths we're looking for are;
- organizational skills - in the realms of both time and space
- communication skills in planning, noting improvements/repairs needed on the farm, problem-solving, and helping keep the team on the same page
- general ability to roll w/ the punches that seem inevitable in farming
- good time management - hustle, enjoyment of honing efficiency, inclination to help improve systems
- desire to skill-build / motivation to grow into more aspects of farm management
- the ability to lift 50+ lbs, walk 3 miles/day, and occasionally start early (like 6:30 rather than the usual 8) on poultry harvest days.
Previous experience working with livestock, driving tractor or operating heavy equipment, and driving truck & trailer are ideal.
Any carpentry, plumbing, or mechanical skills are a big plus! Using spreadsheets / implementation of organizational systems for info and data are handy. Feel free to mention all of your skill sets, as so many find a role at a farm.
Responsibilities include:
- day-to-day care for all groups of livestock on the farm
- attention to longer term livestock care systems - keeping breeding records/notes, identifying any livestock needs not currently met, helping plan/implement improvements to systems on the farm
- pasture management - helping with frost seeding, clipping pasture, subsoiling, spreading compost, etc.
- maintenance of tools and spaces associated w/ livestock management - we need muscle in the organizational department, and that tic where you have trouble walking past a mess in your barnyard without stopping to bust it up and put things where they belong.
- egg collection and packing - end of each day
- loading animals / hauling - each week (usually Mondays) load pigs and cows to haul about 1.5 hours away to our USDA slaughterhouse, and pick up the previous weeks chilled carcasses to bring back to the butcher shop rail.
- compost management - picking up butcher shop scraps a couple times a week with the tractor bucket to turn into the compost heaps, adding carbon and turning compost as needed.
- this job could include either occasional or routine work in the tree nursery depending on your interest / schedule. At the very least, there will be some involvement in occasional bigger pushes like planting or digging weeks, and some help with minutia like watering grafts while they callus and fencing around nursery.
This job can either be year-round or seasonal. Jan-March, we enjoy the flexibility of the quieter season, often planning around one another taking some time off to travel or tackle personal projects, while the others hold down the fort. For farmers interested in this as a seasonal position, the minimum window is May - end of November.
During the summer there are more hours of work to be done, of course, and the team works out a firm schedule that covers the bases during those busiest months of May through November when markets are open, pasture is thriving, and all the literal and figurative hay must be made.
Shoulder seasons have their unique work as well! In March and April we are grafting trees, farrowing piglets, calving, and brooding the first round of chicks a we unpack and set up grazing and poultry infrastructure for the season. In November and December we are digging and delivering trees, packing away grazing and poultry infrastructure, shoring up winter paddocks, farrowing piglets again, cleaning up the farm before snow flies, and serving our rural holiday markets.
Check out our website, and feel free to e-mail with questions and inquiries to find out if this is a good fit for you!
Compensation
this position is: hourly, varies DOE, $18.00 - $22.00
Application instructions
This job expired on December 11, 2025
Deadline
no deadline