Company description

26 acre veg and flower farm in Newtown Square PA. THis is our 6th season of CSA, with a 300ish person membership. We attend Bryn Mawr Farmers Market on Saturdays, and sell to local restaurants and wholesale.

We have not hired publicly in a few seasons because we always have a fantastic crew. A lot of folks have worked for us over the years, and we hope they all agree that our primary values are making this a quality job and a quality place to work. It is rewarding to grow healthy produce and feed our community, but we are most beholden to the people who choose to spend their scarce time and energy here. We want a crew of people who like working together and who treat each other right. It has created a rare dynamic that is inclusive and largely without egos, and that is a precious thing that has taken a lot of work. Now we turn our focus from the challenges of starting a farm and growing our crops and markets to sustaining and improving our lives and our business. We hope the right people will join us. This is a very special place to a lot of people for different reasons. We all do our part to make it the best it can be.

Job description

Our CSA is entering its sixth season! CSA is a wonderful thing. We have about 300 members, and the season runs from early Summer to Thanksgiving. All members pick up on the farm, either Tuesday or Thursday, 330-6 (as of last season). A key role on our farm is an administrator who handles CSA signups, payments and communications with customers and other farms. A lot of the work can be done remotely. It is a part time role that can be almost a full-time job March through May. Previously, it was done by an employee on the farm crew, or an employee who also did our Saturday farmers market. They have moved on, and we need someone to manage our CSA. The ideal applicant would go well beyond this, but that could vary depending upon schedule, preference and interest in other parts of CSA and of the production and sales process and other activities around the farm.

We have our wonderful past CSA administrators to model the position on. Ideally but not necessarily, whoever we hire as CSA Manager would work at least 5 days a week during the peak of the season, and would want a full-time role on the farm. But, this took different forms in the past, and could take different forms in the future, depending on the right applicant’s qualities, experience and preferences. Everything just goes better when the CSA administrator is around at least some time, especially during setup and pickups. So we would rather offer this position to someone who wants to be on the farm often, than to someone who would prefer to just do it all from home. The benefits to this work are that it’s flexible, could be done mostly from home, and isn’t physically taxing like farming. But that really doesn’t have too much bearing on what you do with the rest of your time as long as the CSA work is getting done. 4 possibilities are outlined below, but we are open to more.

• CSA Administration is one part of overall Farm Administrator job

It would make sense for the CSA administrator to take over many areas of the farm that require administration. We would gladly hire a Business Administrator and make the CSA part of it. Someone with a business background who wants to work on a farm, with other people, doing something exciting and worthwhile would be great. The ideal applicant could really bring a new level of organization and effectiveness to all of the work done in the office, and all of our CSA activities.

• CSA Administrator is one part of CSA Management for a growing CSA enterprise

We believe strongly in the concept of CSA, and that growing it would be a benefit to the community. The CSA itself could expand, and the right applicant with some experience with CSA could help us grow and figure out some of the key challenges to growth. There is a huge demand for CSA, and the area we farm is growing rapidly as well. We have some limitations in the short term, but in the longer term there is enough demand to make just the CSA administration a full time role if that’s how it goes.

• CSA Administrator is also Wash/Pack Manager and/or Wholesale Manager

It also makes sense to employ someone in this role who has experience working with food. Many of our best employees came from the food world, and working in the wash pack preparing food for the CSA and orders is really where the week’s share comes together. There could be a lot of synergies involved, and the right applicant could be at the center of putting together the week’s share and communicating with the members about it. This could go naturally with handling wholesale orders and deliveries, for someone who wants an ongoing sales role as we harvest our crops and decide what to sell and what to put in that week’s CSA. Our wholesale season goes on for several months after the end of the CSA.

• CSA Administrator is also a Farmer

It would also make sense to continue employing someone who likes to balance time spent working outside with the crew, engaging with CSA members and farmers market customers at pickups and markets, and time doing computer based work administering the CSA. We would be glad to hire someone who wants a dynamic role engaging with the day to day of the farm, and we understand a lot of folks would really love to just farm in the dirt all day if it were more sustainable. Taking on some office administration work half the time is a good way to square that financially and physically.

Compensation

this position is: hourly, $20/hr +

Location

job can be done remotely

Application instructions

Deadline

no deadline