Apprenticeships
*consider a visit or short-term work exchange prior to applying for the 2024 season. we have tent space for wwoofers and other short-term volunteers, who generally stay for 1-2 weeks.
We have openings (housing) for 4-6 full-time, live-in apprentices, from early-March to late October. Those coming for shorter stays (WWOOFers, college students on break, etc.) may have to bring a tent to sleep in. (Part-time apprenticeships are discussed below) Full time means 30 hours / week, plus a share of the chores (like cooking, cleaning up, firewood). Room and board are provided – basic staples, mostly from our neighborhood food coop, plus what we grow & gather.
Apprentices are expected to have the equivalent of a year (9 months) of gardening experience.
The work is mostly gardening - weeding, sowing, planting, mulching, potting up plants for sale, etc. This includes working with perennials as well as vegetable gardening. Over the course of the season, there will be opportunities for other varied and creative work, including seed saving, medicinal preparations, food preservation, and all the varied tasks which compose a ‘simple’ lifestyle.
If you are interested in applying, please email or post a letter describing yourself, educational, employment and relevant life experience, skills and interests, and objectives / goals in working here (some possibilities are listed below), as well as any dietary requirements or food avoidances. Our diet is generally vegetarian by default, although we enjoy wild game when occasionally available.
A visit prior to making a commitment is best for both of us and required except in unusual circumstances. Sorry, no dogs.
The botanic garden, research library & apothecary, and adjacent natural environments add up to a unique educational opportunity, which I created for myself but delight in sharing.
Part-time apprenticeships: I am very open to people who live in the area (we are about 1 hour from Asheville) and would like to volunteer for one (or more) days / week, but not live here. Housing is limited, but interesting work is not. Most of the time, it should be possible to accommodate particular interests (garden-making, medicinal herb cultivation, herbal preparations, etc).
Additionally, we always welcome WWOOFers and other short term visitors – especially those who are considering applying for the following year. Please contact us in advance to let us know when and for how long you would like to visit. WWOOFers and other visitors generally stay for a maximum of 1 - 2 weeks.
SCHEDULE
We work six hours / day, five days / week. Ideally, the morning three hours are collective work and the afternoon are more individuals or smaller groups working on particular projects of interest to you. We will meet at 9:00 to briefly discuss the morning work and can talk about afternoon projects at lunchtime. Monday morning will be an hour or so walkabout to discuss objectives for the week and make a jobs list. One day every two weeks will be clean and organize day; keeping tools organized and clutter reduced requires constant effort.
A possible option, depending on interest, is to have an evening for workshops (lecture / discussion) on any of a lengthy list of topics ranging from basic botany and plant nomenclature to Daoist philosophy, medicinal herb uses, garden design history, garden / nature poetry, local plant communities, permaculture principles, mushroom cultivation, etc., etc.
APPRENTICE PROGRAM 2022
This year marks two important anniversaries: Mountain Gardens’ 50th and my 80th . Fifty years ago, this was just a few acres of sloping woodland, never farmed (because too rocky), but periodically logged (most recently probably in the 1950s) and then left to grow up again in poplar trees. In short, a property that no one would have looked twice at but for its single advantage of being adjacent to the National Forest (no view, no water even). What has happened here since 1972 has involved no heavy machinery (only hand labor) and a minimum of money, a primary goal of the project being to be relevant to as many people as possible: a little bit of marginal (cheap) land and a little bit of money. The results can be read about on this website and viewed in over a hundred videos on our Youtube channel. How this has come about is what I have to teach and I am calling the
SCHOOL OF PARADISE GARDENING
This year’s apprentice program will be considerably more structured than in the past. In addition to a weekly half-day plant walk / field botany class there will be one evening class per week on topics ranging from ecophilosophy to cultivation & use of health promoting herbs to seed germination techniques. There will be a syllabus for the program and apprentices will rotate responsibility for preparing a several page summary of the lesson, to be shared online. Objectives for the week will be laid out at a meeting and walk on Monday mornings, and there will be a general meeting at lunchtime.
As in the past, the daily program will be 3 hours of group work in the morning on projects like bed preparation, planting, weeding, harvesting, pruning, etc. and 3 hours in the afternoon working individually on areas such as nursery production, food production and preparation, medicinal herbs, building and alternative energy, outreach (website, video, workshops) and more. We work 6 hours / day, 5 days / week. Two week’s vacation time (we’re flexible on this). The program starts at the beginning of March and runs to the end of October. Upon successful completion you will receive certification of what has been learned and, hopefully, a bonus of $500 (our income is somewhat tied to the pandemic situation which is unpredictable). Apprentices may attend any plant walks and workshops no charge and get a 50% discount on tinctures, seeds and plants
We provide food; for shelter there are two wooden yurts, an old airstream trailer and a small house with running water, electricity and a sleeping loft, as well as several roofed camping areas which it is hoped to develop into huts (with the addition of walls and floors). The lifestyle is ‘neo-primitive’ – about halfway between how you grew up and camping out (we cook with wood, bury our waste, etc.). There are opportunities for you to earn income, on your own time, using our resources.
Depending on the number and degree of experience of applicants, we are contemplating having two groups in 2022: the usual apprentice program at MG as described below and; a second group of ‘pioneers’ who would be developing a recently logged adjacent property which is meant to become a school. They will be transforming two roofed areas into a classroom / library and a kitchen, constructing a variety of simple shelters / huts using available materials (rocks, clay, saplings) and making a Paradise Garden. The property adjoins National Forest and is actually the trailhead for the steepest train in eastern N America, the Woody Ridge trail (see internet for descriptions and video).
In addition to all the tasks of developing and maintaining the gardens, some specific projects for 2022 are:
Constructing a “Chinese greenhouse” Semi underground, for winter food production.
Organizing and cataloging our excellent and extensive library
Planting many edible and medicinal trees and shrubs (“food forest”)
Removing invasive plants which have colonized several areas and replanting natives
Making green roofs over several camping areas, experimental plantings
Labelling and cataloging the living plant collection leading to making a guidebook to the gardens
Make more educational videos and more promotion of our work on social media
A prerequisite for this program is a year of gardening experience. To apply, send a letter (email) describing yourself, educational and work experience, skills and interests and what you bring to the project and what you hope to gain from it. Applicants will necessarily be chosen based on kind and degree of experience.
Previous descriptions of the program are retained below, almost all of this still applies.
Mountain Gardens is in the process of becoming a land trust. The property will be managed by a collective of the residents, who will both earn a living and accumulate equity. A successful apprenticeship here would constitute the requirement for residing here as part of the collective.
APPRENTICE 2020
THE YEAR OF DOUBLING DOWN
Thank you for your interest in Mountain Gardens (MG) apprentice program. Here is the latest vision, although much of the information from previous years (below) is still relevant and will not be repeated here.
I look forward to a new decade with an increased sense of urgency. I do believe that we are in the midst of an ecological catastrophe which is going to get worse at an ever accelerating pace. It is no longer possible to write a book about where we are headed because by the time it is published it will be obsolete, the projections having become significantly worse. I do anticipate (although always hoping not) major, life altering geophysical, social and economic disruptions in this decade.
For almost fifty years I have been trying to develop and demonstrate a way of life which, widely practiced, would have avoided this. I thought we had more time. Fifty years ago the climate was not an issue at all (except for a small fringe group believing in a coming ice age) at that time nuclear war was the big threat. But it doesn’t really matter whether the concern is avoiding, surviving or rebuilding from an ecological or , for that matter nuclear catastrophe (although that would happen in a second whereas the ecological catastrophe promises to just keep growing, at an accelerating pace, for the rest of our lives and beyond); in any case I remain convinced that Paradise Gardening (described elsewhere on this website) is the answer to the question: what can I do now?
Learn to live on / in / as part of Gaia. And MG is optimally situated to contribute to the massive re-education of our citizenry that is called for.
And there is another reason for the feeling of urgency mentioned earlier: I am 77 years old. The work of developing MG will never be finished but there are a few important aspects to the project which I think it important to add before I pass (it) on: these are mentioned below. And then there is the question of who it will be passed on to? My number one goal now is to evolve a small community of 6-8 (possibly more) to carry on the work. My vision for such a community is described elsewhere on this website and in a youtube video. Openness to the possibility that you might live here the rest of your life is certainly not a requirement for the apprentice program, but it is a plus.
PROJECTS AND OBJECTIVES FOR 2020
The primary objective is community and one way towards that goal is more communication about what we are doing and where we are going, clarifying the goals and strategies and procedures for achieving them. Teamwork!
New educational facility: There is a great need, which will only increase, for education in how to live on earth. I recently purchased the last half acre between MG and the National Forest boundary at the end of the road. It is ideally situated between MG’s ‘botanical garden of useful plants’ and the trailhead for what is billed as the ‘steepest hiking trail on the east coast’ (the Woody Ridge trail – you can read about it online). I anticipate using the space for teaching a Permaculture course as well as extended (1-2 week) programs on gardening, medicinal herbs, wildfoods, primitive skills and all the other things we do here; I also anticipate renting the facility to college classes, herb schools and private groups. The facility will consist of an old airstream trailer (moved there last autumn), which will house the instructor / director (position currently vacant), a classroom space and outdoor kitchen (both currently under construction) and about a dozen campsites which will eventually be roofed. There will be a clearing (the site is wooded) to allow for photovoltaics and to become an herb garden and food forest. The folks attending the workshops will do the work (making an herb garden, food forest, developing campsites, etc.)
Food production: A very important goal is to produce enough food for everyone living here and eventually also for people attending the longer workshops. In the past we produced much more food, but it dwindled as the original garden clearing became much shadier (due to “dwarf” evergreens which I planted) and as I put more energy into growing medicinal herbs. Over the past eight or nine years we have cleared and terraced a new sunnier area and built a new greenhouse and coldframes specifically for food production and I think we now have enough land prepared to feed ourselves. We always have plenty of vegetables but need to produce more staples (carbohydrates / protein) and also grow storage crops for winter and/or do more food preservation (canning, pickling, drying). We have a few ducks, want to increase the flock, and would also like to add chickens, specifically the black skin chickens which the Chinese believe are the most healthful – I do have access to these. I’d like to experiment with letting them free range but there will have to be a coop and pen constructed.
Expanding and curating our plant collection: There may be a large influx of Chinese medicinal herbs as Peg Shaeffer is wanting to relocate her very large collection due to danger of forest fires in her area in California. This will quite likely result in MG having the largest collection of Chinese herbs in the country. We already have one of the largest collections of perennial vegetables / wildfood plants but I would like to keep increasing it. Many very desirable clones of perennial food plants are not easily available on the market; we need to get involved with the network of enthusiasts who are working on collecting, selecting and breeding. We have much valuable material to trade. I can have access to these networks through my work with Stephen Barstow (“Around the World in Eighty Plants”, edimentals.com). At the same time we really need to upgrade our curating of the collection: setting up a database to keep track of accessions, getting positive botanical ID and perhaps even making voucher specimens of some of our rarer species, making more permanent labels and locating the plants on our new base map of the property with the aim of eventually producing a guidebook. There are many ways to conceptualize MG – I have always thought of it as a work of art, but ‘research institute’ is another hat we could wear, and tighten up our procedures accordingly.
Housing: I would like to see some of our campsites (there are 6 at MG, plus the new ones at the new facility) begin to evolve into ‘huts’. This would involve first of all roofing them, walls and perhaps floors would follow. We have a supply of locust (rot-resistant) posts and can make more, and I can afford metal roofing.
Beer making: We have a complete setup for making our own beer, but it has been gathering dust, meanwhile we take a lot of bottles and cans to recycling. We do make lots of mead, usually herbal, and produce alcohol for tinctures, but that’s not really the same. If we had a brewer we might consider actualizing a long term fantasy of mine to host a weekly beer & pizza night for the neighborhood (there are, alas, no pubs nearby).
INCOME OPPORTUNITIES
An apprenticeship position at MG is unpaid. I provide room and board (whatever food we can’t grow, everyone takes turns cooking). One of my personal goals is to live on as little money as possible; I regard the amount of money one lives on as an index of the extent to which are lives are dependent on ‘civilization’ (the Anthropocene / Capitalocene) versus my goal of meeting needs directly from our involvement with Gaia (the garden).
That said, there are numerous ways to earn money here, and ways that will actually help us evolve in the direction of needing less money. One of my concepts is a distinction between apprentices (first year, relatively inexperienced - although not unexperienced: a year or equivalent of basic gardening is a prerequisite for applying) and ‘fellows’ (second year or, possibly, persons coming here with a significant amount of experience in one or more of the areas of our work). Fellows are invited to spend half time (afternoon shift) on an area of personal interest (but which also advances the purposes of MG) which can generate income for them. For example, one of the fellows has charge of our seed business and oversees seed collection, cleaning and storing, and promotes seed sales and fills orders – all of the income generated goes to him. Some other possible sources of income utilizing and enhancing our resources include:
Bare root plant sales (by mail). This is something we have done in the past but we have by no means exhausted the possibilities for income. It would involve more promotion (internet) and a lot of packing and shipping.
Promoting and selling some of our specialty crops such as wasabi and Gynostemma and other adaptogens. We have not even begun to tap the large market for these. We would be selling seeds, plants and information. A number of relevant videos have been made which would be helpful in promotion.
Promoting workshops. There will be a lot more of these as the new facility becomes operative. A percentage of the income generated is paid back to whoever takes on the job of promoting (Facebook, etc. there are many more websites where we could promote ourselves than we have utilized. None of us relishes the idea of spending time on social media, but there is income which can be generated)
Teaching workshops. If there is a MG related topic which you would be comfortable teaching we will promote it, provide the facilities and give most of the money to you.
Dried herbs / tea blends. I’m hoping to get a much better herb drier built this winter. Very big opportunity for earning income here; again, it would be mostly about promotion. Adaptogens (health promoting, stress relieving herbs and formulas) are big and will get much bigger and MG is ideally positioned to tap into this market – we might be growing a wider diversity of these plants than anyone else.
Tinctures / topicals. We make a lot of tinctures but sell them only locally. We would have to drastically upgrade our facilities and record keeping to market more widely although this is a possibility, using facilities available in Asheville, if anyone wanted to do it. Topicals are less regulated and there is a lot of opportunity there. We could also put more effort into promoting our herb shop (self-help herbal health center) locally.
Farmer’s Market. If you like doing this, someone could earn income by taking our plants, tinctures and condiments to the local farmer’s market.
Co-authoring a book about Paradise Gardening and Mountain Gardens. As you can see by looking around the website (and youtube) much preliminary work has already been done, it will largely be a matter of pulling it all together.
This is just a sampling of the possibilities here. The most serious income opportunity will be the position of Director of the new education facility. Again, there is no salary offered but this person would earn a significant percentage of all income generated (and presumably they would also be the instructor for a number of the classes).
The ‘School of Paradise Gardening’ – a utopian fantasy
Once upon a time there was, or will be, a small community of persons who shared a goal: to create a Paradise Garden, develop it, maintain it, live in it, enjoy it.
It is a collective garden community; there are areas of responsibility: vegetable, herb and fruit gardens, structures, water system, nursery & seed collecting, kitchen & food preservation, bees, mushrooms and many more. The fellows know what they are responsible for. Whatever they need is provided, including help (apprentices) and guidance (elders), tools, materials, texts.
On a typical morning, everyone (apprentices, fellows, elders) will be working together in one part of the garden: planting, weeding, harvesting, pruning, propagating, fertilizing, grubbing, labeling, terracing, mulching, etc. On a typical afternoon, the fellows and elders are engaged with projects in their own domains; the apprentices assist where needed.
The apprentices rotate between helping in all the sectors, and in the course of a year come to understand how it all works, learn where everything is kept, how to anticipate and deal with the usual problems, how to distinguish the garden plants and the weeds, and what to do with each, etc. Apprentices are provided room & board (board means groceries – everyone shares in the food preparation); at the end of the year, apprentices may be invited to return as fellows.
Fellows receive room & board, a modest monthly subsidy, and the opportunity to earn income either by taking on a pre-existing ‘business’ or by starting a new (garden-related) one. Examples would include: selling seeds, seedlings, plants, produce or value-added products, marketing information, landscaping, promoting workshops & tours, etc. Fellows may also, if they wish, construct their own shelter (using primarily materials available on the land -clay, stone, wood – other materials are provided), or improve an existing one.
The garden has its own income stream, which provides whatever food we (thus far) can’t grow ourselves, tools, materials, books, utilities (phone & internet), truck, etc. as well as the subsidy to fellows. Everyone pitches in to help the garden earn money; that’s part of the morning shared work. But the garden also affords an almost infinite number of other opportunities to generate a modest income (and how much do you really need, if your shelter, food, medicine, lights, music, internet, phone, shower / hot tub, companionship, transportation, etc. are provided?), and it is these opportunities which fellows are encouraged to explore. An expected outcome of this program is that participants will leave with not only a thorough knowledge of how to develop and maintain a Paradise Garden, but with a specific ‘product’ and indeed an established ‘business’ (website) to generate the unavoidable amount of $ needed to survive (and hopefully a little extra to thrive).
A prerequisite for apprentices is ‘basic gardening knowledge / experience’. Meaning a full season gardening apprenticeship or the equivalent. Fellows are expected to have considerably more experience. The best and most natural way to become a fellow is to be an apprentice here for a year and then, by mutual agreement, move up to become a fellow the following year(s). As indicated above, fellows will choose (or be assigned) areas of responsibility (veg gdn, fruit gdn, herb gdn, kitchen, apothecary, structures, water system, etc.) Individuals with considerable garden experience plus the necessary specialized knowledge and experience may move directly to fellowship.
This is a small community, say six to twelve adults. There is much interaction and camaraderie. There is a shared interest in Paradise Gardening, i.e. the development of a way of living on earth that is sustainable, democratic and satisfying. Sustainable means beneficial, or at least not injurious to Gaia, the planetary ecosystem. Democratic means beneficial, or at least not stealing from, our fellow humans (which requires considerable restraint since, as Americans, we are born with a license and it sometimes seems even a mandate to steal). Satisfying means beneficial to our health and happiness, and herein lies the crux of the matter: it is above all essential that we consider our lifestyle, with its implied limitations on, say, gasoline (use as little as possible, ideally none), or purchased food (use as little as possible, ideally none), etc., not as ‘self-sacrifice’ but as liberation.
Beyond health and happiness, the personal goals of Paradise Gardening are ataraxy and enthusiasm. Ataraxy means calmness, or tranquility; more specifically, the peace and contentment which follows from having a certain knowledge of the world and one’s place and role in it. Ataraxy was the main goal of the School of Epicurus (a rival of Plato’s Academy in ancient Athens), and this utopian community is partly based on his ‘garden school.’. John Lennon’s lyric ‘Imagine’ hints at the pleasures of ataraxy, and at how quickly the world could change if we could change our worldview.
Enthusiasm (latin ‘inspiration’) refers to freeing the ‘God within’ to act. Not just at occasional periods of creativity, in the studio, or worship, in church – we seek to infuse our lives with enthusiasm: to wake in the morning, the God within eager to engage with the world, the God without.
To live in a Paradise garden, in the company of enthusiastic gardeners….