We consider these hot rainy months of the summer as our “off season” although we still work almost daily at the farm. Our CSA program and farmers market stand end in April after which we focus our energy on pulling old plants, planting cover crops, and building new garden space and infrastructure. Our full season apprentices usually work through April and then we say goodbye as they move on to do other cool stuff, like drive around the country learning about farming during the busy summer months of the northwest. So its during this time of building, planning and looking towards the future that we start our search for next seasons full term apprentice. 

Apprenticing at Little River Cooperative is an incredibly unique experience filled with fun, education, and definitely a fare share of sweat, but its not for everyone. We strive to incorporate our apprentice fully into our multi faceted business so that they can learn as much as possible about running an urban farm and making a living off farming. Our apprentice is expected to make a full season commitment to us, which means working about 15-20 hours per week every week from September through April (although of course we are flexible and open to things like vacation time, or late start dates/ early ending, we know that life is complicated). Because we trust our apprentices with lots of different tasks we have to be able to rely on them being committed for a certain length of time, and committed to showing up as regularly scheduled. Apprentices do pretty much the same work as we do… theres lots of soil preparation, planting, weeding, and harvesting to be done at the farm, but we also have a nursery space where we propagate tons of varieties of edible plants, we do grafting there, educational programming, and we use those plants to plant and maintain private gardens around town. Our business is super varied which makes it a fun environment in which to learn, since there are lots of different things to get hands on experience with. In these days, an urban farm has to have a diversified income stream like the one we’ve cultivated, and we pass on our business knowledge and experience to our apprentice as well, since we want you to be really well equipped to succeed with your own farm project once you’re done helping out at ours. 

In exchange for the hard work and time an apprentice gives the farm, we give our apprentice a fertile growing space at the farm where they can put their new experience to work and grow whatever they want! The space has good soil and will be irrigated, and you can use absolutely all of our resources to help plant it including seeds, seedlings, tools and opinions (we’ve got plenty of those lying around!). There will also be plenty of vegetables to share! 

What else? our farming spaces are spread out throughout north miami, from little haiti up to biscayne gardens, so keep that in mind if you’re thinking of apprenticing. We expect about 15-20 hours from an apprentice, and we start at 8am so most work hours will be in the morning. We participate in a farmers market every saturday and apprentices are not obligated to come but are welcome to join us if they also want to learn about that part of the business or sell something of their own. Most of our work is very hot and physical… if you want to get a taste for what a work day would be like, we suggest you come volunteer at the farm sometime, thats really the best way to get to know us, our business, and wether you’re really interested in apprenticing and farming in Miami. email us at mail@littlerivercooperative.com for more information.