Dickinson College Farm Six-Month Apprenticeship Positions
The Dickinson College Farm offers a unique opportunity to recent graduates and young professionals interested in embarking upon a six-month learning and working intensive through a residential Farm Apprenticeship program. Apprentices will gain the skills, experience, and knowledge needed to advance toward leadership roles within the professional arena. In addition to farm-specific training, this experience is applicable to furthering academic studies and employment opportunities related to the food system, sustainability, and education.
Apprentice positions are full-time and run from May until late November. Apprentice positions include a competitive hourly pay plus on-farm housing including amenities. More details on the 2025 Farm Apprentice position and an application can be found at https://blogs.dickinson.edu/farm/apprentices/ .
Applications are reviewed as they are received. The final deadline to apply is February 19, 2025.
The College Farm is located at 553 Park Drive. Free housing in residential yurts on the farm is included with the apprenticeship.
Apprenticeship Program Overview:
The College Farm Apprenticeship is designed to offer recent college graduates an in-depth exposure to small-mid scale regenerative, organic, vegetable and livestock production agriculture. With enthusiastic participation, this apprenticeship will serve as a valuable base upon which to build a career in agriculture. The experience is also applicable should apprentices choose to return to academic studies or seek other employment related to food, sustainability, and education.
Program Structure:
The apprenticeship begins in mid to late May and ends in late November. Our workdays are typically from 7:30 AM to 4:30PM Monday through Friday, with an unpaid one-hour lunch break. Those times may adjust seasonally or to accommodate weather. Some farm responsibilities occur on weekends or require work outside of the normal hours. These include daily livestock care, CSA clean up, irrigation during the dry season, greenhouse management, farmers’ market, and food service events. Apprentices are required to participate in a rotating schedule with other farm staff for certain tasks outside of normal hours, to be coordinated in advance. Weekend or evening work can be traded for time off during the normal hours to accommodate doctors’ appointments, long weekends, or other personal needs.
During the summer months, apprentices will be part of a team made up of student employees and full-time farm staff. Each apprentice will gain broad exposure to nearly all facets of the farm. Apprentices will also be asked to assume individual responsibility for certain aspects of the enterprise under close supervision of the farm managers – please see below.
When classes resume in the fall, apprentices may take more of a leadership role on the farm, leading students and volunteers on prescribed tasks and work projects. The goal of this program is to equip apprentices with the knowledge and skills to do their work well, and to help them develop important leadership qualities. At times this will require the farm managers to provide respectful constructive feedback. We value open communication and request that applicants be receptive to the idea of receiving feedback to improve upon their work and overall experience. Communication happens in both directions – managers will work to develop a relationship of trust where apprentices feel comfortable expressing their needs and feelings pertaining to all happenings on the farm as well.
The Apprenticeship Program is also a chance to live and work on a farm - witnessing the seasonal transitions and other discoveries of place-based living that can only been experienced through on-site residency. By living on the farm, this program aims to cultivate a sense of community among the farm residents. Residents are expected to contribute to keeping shared spaces sanitary and tidy.
Our Commitment to Employee Development:
We endeavor to provide varied opportunities both on and off the farm for personal and career development for all employees. This includes:
1. Weekly paid farm meetings and educational programs during the summer.
2. Occasional field trips to respected local food system enterprises during the paid work week.
3. Optional social visits or educational visits to other farms during evening/weekend hours.
4. Exposure to ongoing experimental and investigative projects at the farm.
5. Engaging in farm-based community educational outreach events.
6. Access to optional relevant readings.
7. Reference for future employment in food system if desired.
Individual Areas of Responsibility:
One of the most important aspects of our program is that apprentices will be asked to assume individual areas of responsibility under close supervision of a farm manager. In these roles, apprentices will receive careful training and encouragement but ultimately be asked to take ownership and lead the day-to-day execution of the appropriate duties. Attention to detail, flexibility, communication skills and self-motivation are key to success in this role. Please see options below:
- Pastured Beef Cattle Care
- Organic Greenhouse Controlled Environment Management and Seedling Production
- Organic Vegetable Irrigation
- BCS Two Wheel Tractor Operation
- Fresh Product Inventory Management
- Farmer’s Market Management
- Fresh Product Processing for Freezing
- Compost Production Support
- Biogas System Operations & Community Food Waste Collection
- On-site farmstand management
- Farm to Table event support
Apprentices will share a modern kitchen, common room, washer/dryer, and bathroom facility. Food raised on the farm is available to our apprentices, including free produce and discounted access to retail items such as meat from the farm.
Program Culture:
Success in any business, but especially agriculture, is dependent on hustle, efficient workflow, and attention to detail from all participants. The farm management team love the work they do and find beauty and joy on the farm nearly every day, yet they have learned through experience that achieving good harvests and a healthy agroecosystem requires constantly pushing themselves to be faster, smarter, and more organized. Farmers do not sleep well at night if the crops and livestock are not properly cared for in a timely fashion. The Dickinson College Farm sets ambitious goals for vegetable and livestock production and health, as well as for a diversity of education and outreach programming. Meeting these goals will require all team members to pay attention to details, think about efficiency of movement, and push themselves to develop a fast pace in repetitive tasks. Apprentice candidates should be prepared to be pushed to develop their speed as a core skill set that will benefit them in any future employment. Everyone can learn to work like a successful professional farmer if they approach the role with an open mind and a positive attitude. Since apprentices play an important role in sharing the culture of hustle and efficiency with students and volunteers on the farm, this will be a recurring theme in the apprentice training program throughout the season. We hope apprentices will embrace this mentality as part of the fun of “winning” at the game of farming.
Please carefully read over the questions and reply accordingly. Applications and questions should be submitted by email to all three members of the farm management team:
halpinj@dickinson.edu - Jenn Halpin – Program Director
steimanm@dickinson.edu - Matt Steiman – Livestock and Special Energy Program Manager
smithro@dickinson.edu - Alex Smith – Vegetable Production Manager
Application can be found here: https://blogs.dickinson.edu/farm/apprentices/