Thank you all for your thoughts and ideas about
interns!
Barb
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 2:41
AM
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] was CSA
worker payment: now interns
I had exactly the situation that Barb describes. I wrote
an educational contract -- what I would provide and what I expected of
the intern and then what the intern could expect and what she was to
bring to the table. The person lived locally. I paid $100 per week
for 30 hours of work and gave as many vegetables as the intern desired.
She worked three months. In addition to Rivka's comments about
explaining many things, I made sure that the intern learned something new
every day -- and I would often begin or end the day with a brief discussion of
what would happen tomorrow or what happened today and why. It was a
great experience and extremely beneficial to our farm and the intern. I
invited her back in September to see the crops in the 8 beds that I had her
seed in early August - smiles all around. Weeding, seeding, trellising,
harvesting, selling at market, some tractor work, some rototiller work,
Earthway seeder, etc. I will try to get two interns next summer -- our
intern definitely paid her way with us and was a dependable, valuable member
of the team. Tom, Hillsborough, NC
On Dec 14, 2009, at 11:54 AM, Road's End Farm wrote:
On Dec 14, 2009, at 10:02 AM, BarbaraJ
wrote:
Question about college aged
students as interns. I have a young lady who is interested in living
with us for a month or so during our busiest time and in trade she wants
to just work and learn. I'm really not sure what to do with
that. I didn't look for an intern, she asked me. What do you
all do with your young interns? Do you pay a wage? Not sure I
can really afford a wage, as I'm a small farm, and I don't want to deal
with worker's compensation, withholding, etc. Is this a good
idea?
Barb in CO
The law in this area may
vary from state to state. Enforcement of the law may vary from area to area
within that state. Volunteers in some states may be in a sort of gray area.
The value of the education she's getting really ought to count as a wage in
itself; but not all states allow for this. You might try checking with any
applicable organizations in your state (is there a CO equivalent to NOFA-NY
(organic farmers association)? to NEWOOF (northeast internship listings)?)
to see whether they have any guides out.
Aside from the legalities of
the question, which I really don't want to try to advise you on except to
suggest that you look cautiously into the law in your own state, you need to
consider the following:
Try to make as clear as possible to the
potential intern what she's getting into; especially if she has no farming
experience previously.
Try to make as clear as possible also what the
living situation is. Are you used to living with other people in this
fashion? Is she? Who is responsible for what portions of cooking, cleaning,
etc? Who is paying for her food, her shampoo, etc? Will she cheerfully eat
what you usually eat, or is she used to a different diet, and if so how will
you deal with this? What about use of phone lines (though these days she
probably has her own cell phone); use of your computer and/or internet
connection for her computer; noise/music at various hours; length of time
tying up the bathroom, etc.?
What hours is she expected to work? Will
these be set hours, or "about so many hours a week, but exactly which ones
depend on which days it rains"? When can she count on having time
off?
What is she expecting to learn? Are you going to provide
instruction in tractor use, power tools, etc.? Are you expecting to open
financial books to her? Will she go to market with you? to farm meetings,
farm shows, etc?
Put things in writing as much as possible, to
diminish possible misunderstandings.
Realize that, if she only has a
month, you're going to be spending a lot of time explaining things to her,
relative to the amount of useful work she gets done -- with an intern, you
shouldn't figure on only explaining enough for her to do the few simplest
jobs you have available at that time, as you can with a CSA worker or with
hired help. To deal properly with an intern, you should be explaining
everything that's going on while she's there, as well as your reasons for
doing everything, and as much as you can how this fits in with what goes on
the rest of the time; including pulling her off a simpler job to explain a
more complicated one even if you're going to do the more complicated one
entirely yourself. I generally figure that if I break even on my time versus
the intern's during the first week or two we're doing well. As the season
progresses, the value of the intern's time versus yours improves -- but with
only a month to work with, you're not going to get as much of this factor as
you would with someone staying the full season.
Such things can work
out extremely well, or extremely badly (or of course somewhere inbetween).
Make sure you have a clear agreement as to how to end the arrangement early
if it works out badly. Talk with the intern regularly about how both of you
feel it's going; sometimes issues can be ironed out easily if caught early,
but fester if ignored.
If that sounds overly discouraging: let me
stress again that sometimes such things do work out extremely well. But I
think the chances of its working out well are improved if the situation's
well thought out beforehand.
--
Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly Fresh-market organic produce, small
scale_______________________________________________ Market-farming
mailing list Market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/market-farming
_______________________________________________ Market-farming
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