ALBA

Contact Person: Patty Howe patty@albafarmers.org

The Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) is an organic farm education and business incubation program with a mission to advance economic viability, social equity and ecological land management among limited-resource and aspiring farmers on the California Central Coast. ALBA is currently carrying out a project encouraging transitions away from the use of high-risk pesticides by strawberry and vegetable growers in the region. As part of this project, we seek an enthusiastic intern to help plan and implement on-farm conservation trials at the ALBA farms near Watsonville and Salinas. For more information please visit ALBA's website.

Bonny Doon Farm

Located above the UCSC Campus, the Bonny Doon Village Airport is a 23 acre property recently leased by a group of community-minded sustainability enthusiasts. There are plans to develop the agricultural potential of the site, planting permaculture gardens and orchards. Additionally, there are plans to build a community center for barn dances, musical events, and more. This valuable neighborhood resource is a hub for organic gardening, permaculture, community resiliency, and the performing arts. For more information visit this website.

CASFS

CASFS is a research, education, and public service Center at the University of California – Santa Cruz.  Our mission is to increase the understanding and practice of social and environmental sustainability in the food and agriculture system. This internship position will contribute to the evaluation of a 4 year organic research project. The research project experiments with organic strawberry and vegetable cropping systems of coastal CA, to address the need to develop integrated crop system designs and practices that provide long-term solutions to the problems encountered in today’s cropping systems. This project provides a dynamic platform for growers in the region to research and discuss systems approaches to improve environmental sustainability and economic viability in a comprehensive manner. The evaluation effort will assess knowledge acquired, practices changed, and social learning strategies used to facilitate learning and adoption of new practices. Other evaluation foci may be added. This intern position may also participate in other research efforts. For more information please visit CASFS' website. 

Casalegno Family Farm

Contact People:  Marissa & Matt Kotila   casalegnofamilyfarm@hotmail.com    (831) 476-8032

We are a small family owned farm located in the Soquel hills that has been in operation since 1927.  We grow apples, pears, plums and persimmons on 12+ acres of orchards, a 1/2 acre vegetable garden, a flower garden and maintain 50 chickens.  We sell at 2 local farmers markets (July-Dec), at our country store - Casalegno's Market, and also through a small CSA.  We have been working on replanting our orchards, getting some kind of organic certification and we continue to expand every year. For more information please visit Casalegno Family Farm's website.

Chadwick Garden

Contact Person: Orin Martin  orin@ucsc.edu

The focus of this internship is learning ecological farming and gardening practices and principles.  Participants work side by side with Center staff and apprentices in hands on activities, and engage with curriculum from the apprenticeship in ecological horticulture. For more information please visit Chadwick Garden's website.

Christiansen Landscape

Christiansen Associates Gardens and Design is an organic landscape company located in the Swift St. Courtyard by Kelly’s Bakery on the west side of Santa Cruz.  We design, install and maintain gardens organically for people to live in and enjoy.  Tasks to be performed include: seasonal pruning of fruit trees and perennial gardens, garden maintenance, dry stack stone walls and flagstone patios, etc. We specialize in edible landscapes, Mediterranean – native plants, ponds and waterfalls, organic soil preparation and organic pest management, etc. For more information please visit Christiansen Landcape's website.

Earth Rhythm Farm

Contact Person: Julia Dean  arthrhythmfarm@gmail.com  (831)-462-2043

Earth Rhythm Farm is a up and coming small farm in the heart of town.  At Earth Rhythm our mission is grow organic food for our surrounding neighborhood and share knowledge to empower the community so that we can all create a sustainable future. 

         At Earth Rhythm our work includes a variety of tasks in the subjects of agro-ecology, community building, youth education, integrated pest management, compost methods, irrigation methods, crop planning and rotation, and more.  Interns at Earth Rhythm Farm may choose an area of focus (ie. seeding, soil maintenance, irrigation, promotion, harvest, youth education, etc) to build the internship around and gain expertise in.

We are interested in helping create an internship tailored to the intern’s particular interests and abilities so that the time can be truly rewarding and educational.  Project Objectives could include learning how to design a farm plan, growing crops from seed to harvest, building and preparing soil for planting, developing a youth education program and more.  Tasks could include: seeding, soil preparation, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, developing educational tools, community networking, and more.  For more info, give us a call.  Best of luck in your internship search! For more information, please visit Earth Rhythm Farm's website.

Everett Family Farm

Contact Person: David Evershed  evershed.david@gmail.com   (801)-647-0908

Welcome to Everett Family Farm! We appreciate your hard work and want to have clear policies so that everyone can understand each other and mutually benefit.

Everett Family Farm is a 45 acre organic farm with approximately 5 acres in cultivation of  vegetables and the rest in apple and persimmon orchards.  Jobs that the interns will be doing are diverse, ranging from greenhouse production, field crop planting, weeding and harvesting, to building and repairing farm infrastructure, working with chickens and goats and marketing. Interns are often called upon to do different and sometimes tedious jobs in all kinds of weather. Be prepared for hard physical labor. Job training will be done by David Evershed. It is important to remember that no matter how simple, tedious, or insignificant a task may appear, everything that you do is important to the overall success of the farm.

Farming is production work. The farm earns money by what is actually produced and sold. Since production per hour or day is very important, interns are expected to work quickly and efficiently, to keep up with the pace set by the employers or work quickly on their own.  That being said, there will also be plenty of time to ask questions and take the time to learn all about organic farming practices.  There is no formal curriculum and interns will be expected to take control of their own education, using David and anyone else on the farm as a resource. 

Conversation during work is a benefit of farm work, but please be aware of keeping your hands moving while you talk. Efficient production is critical to the success of the farm.  Interns may be asked to work around machinery and should exercise caution when doing so.

We are cooperatively minded and strive for a harmonious workplace. For more information, please check out Everett Family Farm's website. 

Fogline Farm

Fogline Farm is a small-scale sustainably run farm. We are managed by 3 alumni from the Farm and Garden Apprenticeship program. We sell our products through a 50 member CSA, local restaurants and farmers markets. We grow veggies, fruit trees, wine grapes, and raise broilers (meat birds), layers (egg birds) and pigs. Pigs are slaughtered off farm, but the chickens are slaughtered on farm every Monday and Wednesday morning. We harvest veggies Tuesday morning for Tuesday afternoon drop off. We could use help for either of these harvests. The rest of the week there is plenty of veggie and animal management. This includes:  Weeding, planting, irrigating, sowing for the veggies, feeding the animals, making sure they have plenty of water, moving the pens and fenced areas, and collecting eggs. There are plenty of other projects we need help with. We all have a love for farming and teaching. For more information, please visit Fogline Farm's website. 

Homeless Garden project

The Homeless Garden Project provides job training on a 2.5 acre organic farm and its enterprises, to homeless individuals in the Santa Cruz area.  We run a 60 member CSA (May through October) and have a retail store near downtown.  Interns are encouraged to set their own goals and create a project that will leave a lasting impression on the organization, with unlimited access to the knowledge of the farm workers and agency staff as well as other agencies we work closely with.  Tasks can include, but are not limited to: everyday farm maintenance activities – bed clearing, planting out, greenhouse propagation, irrigation, etc.; planning and teaching a workshop to crew and public participants; fundraising/grant writing; administrative assistance; cooking. For more information, please visit the Homeless Garden Project website. 

La Semenza Farm

La semenza farms are the Permaculture and sustainable agriculture practice sites of Bruce Beernink.  Downtown two acre demonstration site with over 300 speices of multiple use plants.  Eight acre Antique apple orchard in Bonny Doon.   Fifty-three acre Permaculture design and installation project.  Most work will occur at the downtown site, a bike rides distance from the U.  Work will include most aspects of growing organic fruits veggies flowers and  herbs.  Seed bank collections will be sorted and grown out if possible, and new collections made.  Nursery propagation and maintenance is ongoing.  Seedlings and cuttings will be planted as much as possible.  

Live Earth Farm

Contact Person: Emily Mastellone-Snyder  LEFeducation@baymoon.com  (831)728-2032.

Live Earth Farm is a small family farm committed to growing the most delicious, beautiful, high quality organic fruit and vegetables the earth is able to offer. We've always farmed organically. Organic, for us, does not mean simply refraining from the use of synthetic chemicals. We treat our farm as a living organism, and believe in developing a deeper connection with the earth, the community, and environment around us. For more information, please visit the Life Earth Farm website. 

Love Apple Farm

Contact Person:  Cynthia Sandberg   loveapplefarm@gmail.com

Would like to have someone interested in learning more about biodynamic agriculture come intern for this unique farm.  We grow over 300 different varieties of fruits, vegetables, edible flowers and herbs for one of the world’s finest restaurants.  The chef is committed to biodynamic growing, and we are transitioning to that exclusively and will be applying for Demeter certification next year.  The relationship with the restaurant enables us to grow many varieties of produce not usually marketed due to their difficulty or because they are not normally purchased by consumers (such as rare Asian cultivars or white tomatoes). For more information, please visit the Love Apple Farm website. 

Stevenson Garden

Contact Person: Alice Yang  ayang@ucsc.edu (831) 459-2328

Path To A Greener Stevenson (PTAGS), a student sustainability organization, opened the Stevenson Garden in the Spring of 2011.  Our initial goal was to create a learning space to bring the Stevenson community together and to promote sustainability within college.  The Stevenson community proactively came together to keep the garden going, replanting and tending to the crops during the summer break months.  A student internship program was also developed in Summer 2011 through collaboration with the Environmental Studies department and Stevenson College.  The interns are now the primary stewards of the garden. For more information, visit the Stevenson Garden website.

Summer Meadow's Farm

We are hand milking and are looking for someone to help with morning milking.  We have great respect for the goats and try to preserve the herd’s integrity whenever reasonably possible.  We sacrifice our earning ability by keeping the kids with their moms for the first 5 weeks and then, only separate at night and milk mornings and return the kids to their moms for each day.  We keep barns clean and in good repair.  We spread manure on orchards and gardens. 

We are fencing wooded sections and working on installing irrigation in the pastures for rotating pastures.  We’re trying to incorporate some gray water dispersal in some of these.

As soon as we have enough milk, we are starting the spring goat shares with customers, organizing the deliveries, some are through Live Earth Farm’s CSA.  Then we will be making the cheeses, yogurt and kefir, bottling milk and packing orders. 

UCSC Farm (CASFS)

Contact Information:

Orin Martin orin@ucsc.edu (Chadwick Garden Manager)

Christof Bernau christof@ucsc.edu  831- 459-3375 (Farm Garden Mgr./Down Garden)

Liz Milazzo emilazzo@ucsc.edu  831- 459-4661 (Field Production Manager)

The Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food

Systems is a research, education, and public service program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, dedicated to increasing ecological sustainability and social justice in the food and agriculture system. On the UCSC campus, the Center operates the 2-acre Alan Chadwick Garden and the 25-acre Farm. Both sites are managed using organic production methods and serve as research, teaching, and training facilities for students, staff, and faculty. For more information, please visit the UCSC Farm's website. 

Yellow Wall Farm

Contact People: Allen and Judy Hasty  yellowallfarm@baymoon.com  831 325 6891

Our farm is just under 3 acres. The orchard is comprised of many heirloom apple trees that are approximately 30 years old, as well as some younger trees that we have planted. Tree varieties include: peach, apple, asian pear, pear, persimmon, avocado and kiwi, lemon, lime, orange, and blood orange. Our summer field crops include: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, beets, kale, chard, broccoli, eggplant, sunflowers, summer and winter squash, pumpkins, decorative gourds, and loads of beautiful flowers. We also sell to several local restaurants and grocery stores.

We are committed to agricultural conservation and excellence in quality produce. Our criteria for excellence includes, flavor, color, smell, feel and taste. In our quest for excellence and preservation of high quality food, we grow several varieties from the Slow Food Ark of Taste. Preservation of our local food system and heritage varieties is a large part of why we farm. And of course it is deeply satisfying work to feed people good food from good land.

For more information, please visit Yellow Wall Farm's website.