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Apprenticeships

2010 Communal Eldercare Apprenticeship

Start Date: rolling

Social sustainability is an essential part of ecological culture. Join us as we seek to explore and build healthy community through respect, communication, friendship, and care for one another. This 3-6 month apprenticeship is an immersive training in our innovative Communal Eldercare, and is geared towards those who are willing to learn and take on one of the key roles in our community: taking care of Clara.

Clara Boggs is central to the Mountain Homestead community. As the dearly beloved wife of Chip Boggs, she played an integral part in the founding of Mountain Homestead. Clara was diagnosed with frontal-lobe dementia in 2005, and has continued her key role at the Homestead since then in her official roles of "Homestead Metronome" and "Shamaness of Be Here Now". Clara is living proof of the benefits of holistic communal eldercare: after years of daily hiking, real food, clean air, and plenty of love, she is more physically fit than most 72-year-olds. She loves to be with people, being read stories, hugs, walking, music, and cookies. Communitarian Apprentices, Staff, and Core Member Chip all contribute to Clara's care by rotating shifts throughout the day, so that there is someone with her at all times.

We are looking for 1-3 nurturing, warm, compassionate apprentices who are interested in living in community and willing to take on this vital, human, magical and meditative role. There will be an initial two week trial period, in which prospective apprentices will visit, get to know us, observe Clara care, and train/shadow with a seasoned caregiver.

After the trial training period, apprentices will check in with their sponsor and the community. Potential apprentices would be given the option to leave or to commit to a set date within 3-6 months with a refundable $200 security deposit. During and after the two week trial, Anneke Dunnington will be the Eldercare sponsor and support person, holding regular check-ins. Apprentices are required to attend the weekly Community Meeting and Maintenance Day, and cook at least three communal lunches per month. They will eventually work up to two or more Clara shifts/day; outside of that is "free time" in which we strongly encourage apprentices to explore the community in a non-structured, freeform way, taking the time to develop their own unique role and niche in homestead life. Off-site residence, a part-time job in town, or other creative arrangements are negotiable.

Our kitchen and food are communal. Lunch is prepared every day on by a rotating schedule of cooks. Lunches are mostly vegetarian (although you are welcome to have a personal stash of bacon.) Indoor housing is potentially available depending on residents during the summer; after 9/21 it is guaranteed.

We encourage independence and personal growth. After the apprenticeship, we are possibly open to pursuing a longer term arrangement, depending on the person.

Apply for the Communal Eldercare Apprenticeship

Please send your application to Anneke Dunnington at annekedunnington@gmail.com.

2010 Ecoforestry Apprenticeship

We strive to serve as an integrated prototype for ecological, social, and sustainable forest management based on resident stewardship. Ecoforestry, the restoration of forest health, guides our practices which are certified by Northwest Certified Forestry. A collective within the community is nurturing a developing business, Walker Creek Ecoforestry, with the goal of creating a significant source of land-based income. WCE sells FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)- certified sawlogs and custom-milled and processed lumber and flooring. It is working towards offering additional forest products and establishing processing facilities onsite for milling, drying, and planing.

2 Openings

Ecoforestry is restoring forest health, viewing income or products as a secondary benefit. Since 2001, Mountain Homestead has been implementing a forest management plan, written by their consultant, Jerry Becker, for their 360 acres of mixed age, mixed species forest.

Apprentices will learn hands-on: safety, chainsaw use, falling, bucking, limbing, skidding, loading, ground pruning, high pruning, marking a stand for thinning, reopening forest roads, grading and scaling, coppice management and, at another site, how to increase the diversity of a young tree farm. If we get an order for lumber, we'll do some milling.

Through discussion and reading, you will learn about Forest Management Plans, Resident Forest Stewardship, Conservation Easements, Carbon Credits, Buying Forest Land, Value Added Products, Marketing and Planning an Ecoforestry Course. There will be at least one field trip to another Ecoforestry project.

Apply for the Ecoforestry Apprenticeship

Please send your application to Chip Boggs at chipnclara@earthlink.net.

Permaculture Building & Food Forestry Apprenticeship

This 3 month long apprenticeship provides comprehensive practical experience in Permaculture design and implementation through:

  1. Maintenance of established food forest systems.
  2. The design and construction of a home within this food forest network.
  3. Living within and experiencing community living on a homestead scale.

Food Forests

Alongside Ish Shalom, Mountain Homestead's Food Forester, we will work to maintain and continue to establish 4 different food forest systems, altogether spanning 3-4 acres. These include a quarter acre Zone 2 Berry Forest, a small patch of Bamboo Forest, a 2.5 acre Zone 4

Nut Forest and an in-progress establishment of a 2 acre Zone 3 Fruit Forest. These all are perennial multi-story polycultures including layers of vegetables, fruiting vines, as well as multifunctional ecosystem support plants.

Natural Building

In the Zone 4 Nut Forest, established 2009, we will clear the building site and landscape with urbanite terraces and begin working on the building's foundation. The building's design will be methodically combined with the physical work on the site, emphasizing the importance of the process itself as an inseparable part of natural building. Wood harvested from around the site will be processed into posts and beams, to be connnected with walls built of a mixture of materials including strawbales, light-straw-clay and cob.

Expect to learn/practice:

Site analysis, using the scale of permanence, zones and sectors, tool use, selection and care, tractor operation, dry stacking foundations and walls, community social ecology, food forest design and maintenance, food forest establishment, gravity flow irrigation, home scale renewable energy production and use, ecological forest management, homescale sawmilling and roundwood construction, land conservation and access to land, building material accruement, assessment, and reuse, unusual food production and food preservation.

Reading materials:

Apply for the Permaculture Building & Food Forestry Apprenticeship

Please send your application to Ish Shalom at ish.shalom@gmail.com.