Garden Station is a 2 acre community garden & urban farm, art park, sustainable living education center, and community meeting place in the heart of downtown Dayton, Ohio. We have demonstration gardens featuring permaculture design, natural building and educational murals. We teach over 60 free hands-on, DIY sustainable living classes each year on a variety of topics including beekeeping, organic gardening, permaculture, food preservation and preparation, herbal remedies and more; 40 of those classes occurring at EarthFest, which attracts over 4000 visitors.Our urban farmer’s cooperative, “Dayton Urban Grown”, helps to subsidize new urban farmers through sharing of resources and equipment. Over 500 volunteers come each season to visit, take a guided tour and work for 3-5 hours at a time. Our core team are also all volunteers, we are an Ohio Non-profit organization, have no paid staff and operate entirely by community donations and small community grants. Our founder is a Master Organic Gardener, Permaculture Certified and has taken classes in urban agriculture from Will Allen and Jean Martin Fortier, natural building classes at Blue Rock Station and is a graduate of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance Seed School. This season (2016) will be our first spring and summer with our new hoophouses and we will be constructing a wash/pack station and walk-in cooler. We are working with several partners to develop a training program in small scale, no till, intensive urban farming. We grow organically but are not certified.
Internship Starts: ASAP Internship Ends: Negotiable, would like at least 4 month commitment Number of Interns: 1 with room and board for 20 hours/week and 2 or more at 5 hours a week Minimum Length of Stay: Three months. At least four would be desired.
Meals: Meals are not provided, with the exception that many of the ingredients are as a weekly produce share.
Skills Desired: We would love someone with a strong work ethic and attention to detail who is willing to learn! You need to be in good physical condition as the work is mostly manual labor; and self-motivated, with the ability to problem solve but willing to take direction. It is likely you would also be supervising high school age workers. There may be some organizational work to do with the farmer training program and workshop series as well.
Educational Opportunities: We would love to help someone get started with their own urban farm and will share our knowledge. All our workshops are available to our interns as well.
Stipend: This is considered a volunteer position but we are willing to provide a stipend of $40/ week as well as a share of the harvest as a thank you for at least 5 hours of work per week. For twenty hours a week we will provide room and board as a shared house with one of our volunteers as well as $600 for the season. You will be responsible for taxes. Bonuses may be given based upon our success.
Housing: Housing is available for the twenty hour per week position only.
Preferred method Of Contact: Email is best, [email protected]
Internship Details: We would love someone who has a real interest in learning how to grow produce using organic methods for market! You will work a regular schedule, probably at least 5 consecutive hours in a day from 7 am – noon on a weekday (probably Monday through Wednesday), or Friday early evening to harvest for Saturday Market. You will be planting, weeding, harvesting, mulching, watering, maybe doing light construction or supervising school age volunteers. We also could use help scheduling and marketing the workshop series.
