Senior Farmer

Backyard Bounty is looking for a new Senior Farmer for the 2012 growing season.

This is a very intense and demanding job but with great rewards. It involves managing a lot of different small and large plots with varying challenges including: soil, sun exposure, pest and weed pressure, as well as keeping homeowners happy. The farmer is expected to manage the planting and cultivation of these lots along with the other employees, interns and volunteers, working closely with another Senior Farmer, the Manager, and the Owner.

Experience in vegetable growing is a must. Preference will be given to persons with some management experience and at least two full seasons in organic market gardening.

Qualifications and Skills

-Strong work ethic

-Strong team player

-Good communication skills

-Leadership skills

-Able to work independently

-Enthusiastic

-Physically fit

-Willing to work in difficult weather

-Experience working with volunteers and other staff

-Class ‘G’ drivers licence

-Experience using a walk behind tractor (roto-tiller)

-Mechanical and carpentry skills an asset

-Basic computer skills (excel, word processing, internet communication)

-Use of a functioning bicycle

Work schedule and compensation

This is a seasonal position beginning in March or April and continuing until November of 2012. Contact for more details.  This is a paid, full time position, with a salary based on an hourly rate of $10.75. Work is generally during week days, with occasional work on weekends if needed.

Contact

Send a resumé and cover letter to the current Senior Farmer, Tom Armitage at tom@backyardbounty.ca.  Check out www.backyardbounty.ca for more information about the social enterprise.  Applications due December 31^st, 2011.

by may jeong

From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, Sep. 13, 2011

Clarine Lee-Macaraig looks out the window of her Toronto home with pride at her heirloom tomatoes, millionaire eggplants and cheddar cauliflower. There’s chocolate mint that “smells exactly like chocolate,” and lemon balm that is “good with some vodka.” A sea of Provence lavender is in full bloom. There’s parsley, garlic and green onions, too.

“In the summer, my garden gives me 80 per cent of my produce. Whatever I have as leftovers, I am able to freeze.”

The yield is impressive. Ms. Lee-Macaraig counts two pints of cherry tomatoes, at least three cucumbers, an eggplant, some cabbage, blueberries, a zucchini and an endless array of herbs. And that’s just one recent week’s harvest.

An exact dollar value is difficult to pin down, but she estimates her household saves “somewhere around $300” a season. If she were to sell her harvest in the market, she figures she would be “making a killing.” The only time she visits a grocery store is to buy more exotic, tropical fruit, and her summer harvest keeps her stocked well into the winter months.

A rough back of the envelope calculation says she’s only spent about $30 this season.

MORE…

If your rich aunt bequeathed you a 2-acre plot of land near the city, with free title and taxes paid for 10 years and specified that you garden it……… what would your next step be?

Five years from now, which word will be most evident in the alternative food marketing sector?

__organic
__local
__high-rise urban farming
__kilometre-friendly
__ (YOUR choice) ___________ fill in a choice