Farm Fellow – Zumwalt Acres
Last Updated On: January 9th, 2025 at 12:39PM MST
Contact information
Farm Address:3105 E 2000 N Rd
Sheldon, Illinois, 60966
Primary Contact: Acacia Berg
Primary Phone:
Type: Cell
Number: 6083930393
Email: zumwaltacres@gmail.com
Website: https://www.zumwaltacres.org/fellowship
Internship information
General Farm Description: Zumwalt Acres (ZA) is a multifaceted farm, community, and educational hub. We steward vegetables, fruit and nut trees, mushrooms, honeybees and chickens. We also conduct climate change research and implement sustainable soil management practices. We host events to exchange learnings, gather community, make music and art, and celebrate Jewish holidays. We work towards regeneration of the local ecosystem, climate change mitigation, providing food for our community, and creating a space where young people can collaboratively implement their vision of an abundant future.CRAFT Member Farm? No
Internship Starts: 3/2/2025
Internship Ends: 6/4/2025
Number of Internship Available: 2
Application Deadline: 1/15/2025
Minimum Length of Stay: 3 months
Internship Details:
Interested in farming, communal living, and visioning a better future of food? Join us at Zumwalt Acres, a Jewish regenerative agriculture community in Sheldon, Illinois! Our community of 5 farm stewards is looking for 2-3 fellows to join us for the spring season, or longer. Applications are due by January 15, 2025.
Zumwalt Acres (ZA) is a multifaceted farm, community, and educational hub. We steward vegetables, fruit and nut trees, mushrooms, honeybees and chickens. We also conduct climate change research and implement sustainable soil management practices. We host events to exchange learnings, gather community, make music and art, and celebrate Jewish holidays. We work towards regeneration of the local ecosystem, climate change mitigation, providing food for our community, and creating a space where young people can collaboratively implement their vision of an abundant future.
As a Jewish farm, we are guided by Jewish values of land stewardship and food justice and incorporate Jewish practice into the cycle of events at the farm. As a community, we are interfaith and come together as people with a diversity of identities, faiths, and beliefs. We work together to build a multicultural community that nourishes everyone involved, and encourage fellows to bring their own personal practices (spiritual, religious, cultural, or otherwise) in whatever ways feel meaningful to share.
ZA fellows are self-directed folks, aged approximately 18-28, who live at the farm, co-create community, and support farming operations, event hosting, and other organizational work. Fellows will collaboratively build work and community systems that are mutually supportive and center learning.
Fellows will support ZA’s work in the following areas:
– Farm work: harvesting, weeding, planting, tending compost, tree care, mushroom cultivation.
– Marketing: maintaining a good relationship with distributors (Down at the Farms, Watseka Farmers Market, Sheldon Food Pantry) and carving paths for equitable food allocation.
– Event Planning: Support farm events by preparing the space and contributing to applicable programming.
– Community building: Creating a healthy and conscientious communal living environment with other members of the house and ZA community.
– Community outreach: maintaining ZA’s connections with the Sheldon community, other farmers in the area, other food and climate justice organizations, and participants in community events and research field days.
– Coming up with ideas that you are excited to implement! We are excited to engage with applicants who are passionate about our mission — so if you have a skill set that isn’t listed, we want to hear about it in your application!
Fellows receive free food and housing, and a $650 stipend for the 3-month season.
The link to apply can be found here: https://www.zumwaltacres.org/fellowship
Educational Opportunities: Regenerative agriculture practices, horticulture and agroforestry skills, mushroom cultivation, beekeeping, animal husbandry, climate change and sustainable agriculture research, food justice organizing, mutual aid, Jewish and interfaith education and shared practice, community cultivation.
Skills Desired: Farming and communal living experience are a plus, but not required. Applicants should have an active interest in living in an intentional community and awareness of the challenges that come along with it, thoughtfulness in the role that agriculture plays in people's lives, the midwest, and beyond, and excitement to get your hands dirty and do a little bit of everything at the farm. There is no one right application!
Meals: Yes
Stipend: $650 for the 3-month season, along with free food and housing
Housing: Yes
Preferred method of Contact: email