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Chrysalis Farm at Tolstoy Most of the work up here on my farm involves planting, transplanting and tending bedding plants to be sold at the farmers market and maybe, if I play my cards right, a few other retail outlets like nurseries in 2007. I also have a fairly large home garden consisting of permanent raised beds where I experiment with no-till gardening. It's a fun place to practice gardening and you'd be welcome to practice also and share in the produce. I have one milking goat right now and I'm hoping she freshens in the spring, so milking and feeding will be a daily chore we'd share as well as possibly tending to kids. It's possible I could be taking on one or two additional goats come spring. If you want to learn about canning, I usually put up a bunch of jam from my fruit trees. There's also the big market garden down the road (Eden Gardens at Tolstoy) and you'd also have the opportunity to work down there planting, weeding and harvesting. I might also be working again down there next year. Both my farm and the other one use a revenue-sharing method of pay. After expenses, the money is divided up proportional to hours contributed to the total hours, so everyone gets the same hourly wage. The big garden waits till the end of the season to make its major cash disbursement (although some advances are okay). Up here, I've worked out a system where I can do my disbursements as the cash comes in. Housing is my only gray area and might entail camping out and sharing my kitchen (very dry here during the growing season, living outside can be quite nice), but I'm fairly confident you'd be able to live just down the hill from me in a downstairs one-room apartment in a historic dome-shaped former hippie school that has cold running water, cooking facilities, wood stove and rudimentary bathing facilities. Other bathing facilities around the community would likely be available for your use. Electricity might also be a possibility. Currently, it's turned off. I start planting seeds for the bedding plants in March but I don't have two people's worth of work to do until late April, but then it gets real busy rather fast. We buy organic and natural foods wholesale direct from a major distributor and many of us at Tolstoy order great food at way lower prices this way and you could also. You would also be welcome to harvest food for your meals from Chrysalis Farm and surplus from Eden Gardens. Please send me an email message or letter describing a little about yourself, what you are looking for, what you have done in the past and what you hope to do with your gained knowledge of organic farming in the future. Chrysalis Farm grows certified organic bedding plants, cherries, apricots and plums on a micro, micro scale (we used to grow salad mix, spinach, edible pod peas, bok choy, green beans, pickle cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, melons, raspberries, culinary & medicinal herbs, vegetable seeds, etc. until we gave up on growing all this stuff with our meager water supply). Now we're working on expanding the bedding plant operation and maybe start work on building a mini cheese plant for making goat cheese. We have a nanny goat and her little buckling and hope to expand the herd upwards towards a dozen (I've had up to a dozen goats in years past). I have a nice home garden and am willing to share the work-load and produce with intern(s) Chrysalis Farm hosts apprentices to provide up and coming organic farmers an opportunity to gain skills and experience. I prefer to work with newbies. We are affiliated with the Tolstoy Farms Marketing Collective that markets products grown or made at Tolstoy, including certified organic produce from Eden Gardens, a four-acre market garden that has a 75 member CSA, markets at the Spokane Farmers' Market and does a little wholesale. The possibility exists for interns to work at either or both (Chrysalis & Eden) farms. Chrysalis Farm was founded in 1991 by Chrys Ostrander who moved to Tolstoy Farm in 1990 from Santa Cruz, CA (Tolstoy Farm is the oldest existing non-religious intentional community in the U.S.). Chrysalis Farm began as a one-person, quarter acre, intensive cultivation, organic vegetable, herb and flower farm at the very bottom of Mill Canyon, on leased land adjacent to Tolstoy Farm. After five years of growing at that location and selling the produce along side other product from Tolstoy at a public market in Spokane, Chrysalis Farm moved to higher ground on the part of Tolstoy known as "The North 80". The farm was moved to a sloping shelf midway up the canyon side allowing for as much as a month longer growing season (if we're lucky) compared to the canyon bottom. In 1997, about half an acre of sloping field was transformed into a terraced mini-farm and in 1998, about four acres, including the farmhouse, fruit trees and a 16' x 50' greenhouse, were finally fenced in (against the deer). Chrysalis Farm then consisted of 50 four-foot-wide beds totaling one-third of an acre, a handful of mature apricot and cherry trees and an expanding raspberry patch. In 2005, after too many seasons of trying to grow too much with too little water, the raspberries perished and the terraced beds were mostly converted to pasture. I'd be happy to work with someone (or sometwo) who would be interested in the bedding plant side as well as construction using non-traditional methods of the cheese kitchen and also converting a collapsed root cellar to a cheese aging room. At times there's a bit of fruit picking to do (depending on how lucky we are with late frosts, etc.), milking a goat or goats every day, canning, cheese making, gardening, water conservation. It's a challenging place, hot, dry summers, minimal creature comforts but offers good times too and a very unique experience. |
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To Contact Chrysalis Farm: Postal Mail: Phone: (509) 725-0610 Email:
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