Our volunteering and training programme at Kelmarna Community Farm
Held on Fridays from 9am to 3pm for 16 weeks.
Through a combination of training sessions and hands-on working, participants will learn regenerative organic food growing skills, and gain experience suitable for application to anything from productive home growing to small-scale market gardening or farming.
Applications are currently closed while we are in the middle of delivering the programme to our current cohort.
Our next cohort and window for receiving applications will be sometime in August 2024. We’ll announce more information closer to the time.
Why have we created this programme?
Kelmarna has typically run open volunteering sessions, where once registered, volunteers can attend whenever suits them.
The structure of the Farmhands programme enables us to confidently invest more time and effort into upfront training for the volunteers enrolled, in the knowledge that they are committed to participating for the duration of the programme. This more intensive training allows these volunteers to gain skills and experience much more quickly than through our open volunteer sessions.
Having a fixed group of committed volunteers each week also helps us to ensure the productivity of the farm and continued supply of produce throughout the year.
The cohort nature of the programme, with the same group of volunteers learning and working together each week, provides opportunities to form lasting social connections and learn from peers in the programme.
We continue to host open volunteer sessions on Thursdays and Saturdays, for those who prefer a more flexible schedule, as we are keen to maintain low barriers to getting involved at Kelmarna.
Who is this programme for?
The programme is for anyone who is keen to fast-track their learning about regenerative organic food growing techniques, and happy to make some commitment in return.
You may be wanting to learn how to make your home garden more productive, thinking about a career in small scale market gardening or farming, picking up skills for use in your future, or wanting to kickstart your volunteering at Kelmarna with upfront learning.
No previous gardening experience is required, though experienced gardeners are also welcome. It is more important that you are enthusiastic, willing to learn, and keen to get your hands dirty!
What will I learn and do?
You will learn skills and gain confidence in many of the aspects involved in running a small market garden operation or production-focused home garden, including:
Soil health – the principles and practice of building healthy soils
Propagation – seed sowing, watering, and pricking out
Planting – bed preparation, transplanting, and direct sowing
Weeding, and processing noxious weeds into future fertility
Harvesting all kinds of produce and preparation for sale
Composting – making hot compost from garden material and community food scraps, and an introduction to worm farming, and bokashi
Food forest – an introduction to the principles and practice of managing a productive food forest
Animal care – chicken care, and introduction to livestock care
Preparing shared lunch from the farm & more!
When does the programme run?
Applications are currently closed while we are in the middle of delivering the programme to our current cohort.
Our next cohort and window for receiving applications will be sometime in August 2024. We’ll announce more information closer to the time.
We always ask that participants commit to attending all or nearly all of the sessions.
We appreciate that you may have a holiday booked, or unavoidable absences that might come up, but the expectation is that you would otherwise intend to come each week. If that doesn’t sound realistic for you, our open volunteer days may be more suitable for you.
How do I apply?
Applications are currently closed. We will open applications again sometime in August 2024.
If you haven’t volunteered with us previously, it would be a great idea to come and volunteer at one of our open gardening sessions (Thursdays/Saturdays) beforehand if you can, to give you a feel for Kelmarna and the kinds of things we get up to here. Check out the Volunteer page for more info.
We’ll be selecting our next cohort of participants based on who we think will be the best fit for the programme, and plan to be in touch as soon as possible after the closing date.
THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO VOLUNTEER AT KELMARNA
If you’d like to volunteer to support Kelmarna with other talents or skills outside of gardening – like graphic design, fundraising, IT systems, event management, or anything else you think might be useful – then please get in touch using the sign up form above.