FIELD CREW

Blooming Glen Farm is excited to provide our full time/full season field crew workers with the opportunity to learn the inner workings of our diverse agriculture business. We are a young ambitious farm, small enough that your presence will really have an impact, but large enough that you will get a diversity of experience. It is our belief that the farm has to be economically sustainable yet also provide a good quality of life for its workers, while at the same time nurturing the soil, environment and community.

As a full time, full season field crew member you will experience many aspects of our commercial produce farm. Learning is achieved through experience. Daily hours for the majority of the season are 7am to 6pm Mon-Fri (Fridays go later) and Saturdays hours TBD, with an (unpaid) hour for lunch, allowing for flexibility due to weather and time of year. You will work 9-10 hour days seeding flats, bunching greens, sitting on the transplanter, thinning roots, pulling weeds, trellising tomatoes, amongst dozens of other tasks over the course of a full season on a farm. You will experience the excitement that occurs when things do not go as planned (as they almost never do in farming), as well as the satisfaction of the harvest of a crop you have been a part of nurturing and sweating over every step of the way. You will return home each night with a feeling of exhaustion and gratitude with all that occurred throughout the day. You will walk away from Blooming Glen Farm with the knowledge of whether farming is the life for you, and well on your way to acquiring the skills needed to start your own farm, or well equipped to move into more managerial roles and take on more responsibility at Blooming Glen Farm over subsequent years.

Following are examples of possible activities:

• Field work: harvesting, transplanting, weeding, pruning, mulching, fertilizing, trellising, staking, thinning, managing irrigation systems (moving pipes by hand), row covers on and off, field clean up.
• Pack-out operations: washing and sorting harvested crops, quality control, and packing/storage of crops
• Greenhouse operations: assisting Greenhouse Propagation manager with seeding, potting-up, moving of flats and other tasks

Necessary Skills

• Strong work ethic and endurance for hard physical work, willing to work hard above and beyond when required
• Sense of humor, positive attitude and enthusiasm
• Ability to balance speed and efficiency while maintaining BGF’s standard of quality
• Physically fit- must be able to lift 50 lbs repeatedly and easily, and work physically all day in all sorts of extreme weather doing repetitive tasks like stooping, lifting, pulling, weeding, etc.
• Must work well in a team environment and be able to communicate honestly and accept feedback

This job requires verifiable agricultural field work experience, preferably on a vegetable farm, handling both manual and machine tasks associated with commodity production and harvest activities. Hourly pay starts at $16.55/hour, must be able to commit to full time, full season work, April or May through November and be available to work M-F and Saturdays. *(Part time summer work may be available for high school students- please send us an email to inquire.) On-farm housing is not currently available. However, we are located minutes from the town of Perkasie where rents are affordable.

Benefits of working on the farm

• Lots of delicious organic vegetables available for your consumption- you will receive a free full CSA share for the duration of your employment.
• Being part of a dedicated community of people working to improve our local food system
• Spend lots of time outside in the summer
• Potential to move up into more managerial roles in subsequent years at the farm

Management Positions (none currently available):

Cultivation Manager–

This position is ideal for someone who has one or more years’ experience on a production oriented farm and is looking to take on more responsibility and focus on one area of management, specifically cultivation. This person will be responsible for assessing cultivation needs and implementing a mechanical cultivation schedule. You will operate Farmall Cubs and a Kubota L245H for cultivation of single row, basket weeder and between strips of mulch cultivation practices. Detail oriented and mechanically inclined ideal. You will also be a part of our regular harvest crew and fill in with field work as needed.

Irrigation Manager–

This position is ideal for someone who has one or more years’ experience on a production oriented farm and is looking to take on more responsibility and focus on one area of management, specifically irrigation. You will become knowledgeable in installation of drip and overhead systems, and implement a daily irrigation schedule. You will be responsible for fertigation, system installation, maintenance and repairs. You will also be a part of our regular harvest crew and fill in with field work as needed.

Finding a match between our farm and our crew is extremely important. We can still vividly remember what it was like to be farm workers ourselves, and we bring these past experiences to Blooming Glen Farm as we continue to develop our management skills and systems and evolve as a farm. Without a symbiotic relationship between the farm and its crew, a drastic decrease in performance and overall satisfaction will occur on behalf of both parties. We try to give an accurate description of Blooming Glen Farm and present the job descriptions and responsibilities in a straightforward manner. After we receive an application from you, we will follow up with a phone call or email if we determine we would like to move forward with scheduling the required on-farm visit. Hopefully this process will assist both of us in determining if our farm is the right place for you. Please call or email us if you have any questions. Thank you for your interest in organic agriculture and in our farm.