year apprenticeship/internship/guest?

Is there places out there you can stay for a year or so at a time in a simple living situation, providing something along the lines of 8 hours of work 5 days a week, learn, grow and be fed without paying rent or being paid?

wwoof.org
helpx.net

best of luck,
W

excellent suggestions.  that is where i would look (i have worked at a few different farms/homesteads/communities in a few different countries in the past few years)

Kazron,

We are looking for apprentices/interns for our farm although it might be a bit far to come - we live in Australia. We are members of the WWOOFing program, but find too many of our WWOOFers although delightful are not really interested in farming. We run a small (400 acre) grazing property and are very interested in how Joel Salatin uses apprenticeships and internships to slowly and carefully select permanent members for his farm. Contact us if you are interested, and we can talk.

there are homesteader 'communities' in St. Lawrence county NY and others connected with the Cornell Rural Studies (at least it was called that once upon a time)
Networking with "intentional communities" and Mother Earth News folks.

Hi hazelcombe,

It was mfrodesen looking for the apprenticeship/internship, not myself.  All the same, I have found myself in conversations about rotational grazing, livestock, and Australia in the past week.  If it looks like I am heading "down under", I will try to remember this post and send you a more direct message .  Oh to have 400 acres to work and play on

Good luck over there!

400 acres is a blessing. Luckily about 250 acres is bush so we let nature take its course there although at some stage I'd like to do some gentle intervention to reduce the danger of bushfires. Rotational grazing is wonderful, but at this stage while we're setting up the system hard work. We've been cell grazing since February 2008 and  already the land is starting to respond. We've been building permanent fencing since November 2010 to divide the property into a large number of paddocks. This wouldn't be necessary if we had chosen only cattle. Tape and a few tread-in posts would have done the trick, but we also have sheep and goats. Multi-species grazing provides better utilisation of pastures and gives a more consistent grazing pattern, but also poses problems of animal containment.

In preparation for climate change, oil decline, metal and mineral decline, global financial crisis, looming famines, etc. there is so much to do, it is sometimes overwhelming. Our to do list consists of: increasing the organic matter of the soil across the whole farm, repairing the hydrology of the whole farm, creating a large food forest, creating a large market garden, building cottages for other people to live here, learning skills such as blacksmithing, working with draft animals, building horse drawn wagons, weaving.

As you see, we are not short of grand ideas or work. To be born at this time in the history of civilisation is offering us immense challenges and immense opportunities.

If you've in our neck of the woods, please contact us. We love meeting like-minded people.