Permaculture Incubator Opportunity in IN

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The living situation is a 720 sq. ft. mobile home that we originally brought onto the property to live in while building a house.  In the six years we lived in the trailer we spent some time making it more sustainable.   We landscaped with vines and edible perennials to help seasonally shade the home, and built a passive solar greenhouse onto the south side to heat the trailer and grow seedlings for our farm.  For water, we set up a rainwater harvesting system collecting off an adjacent workshop. We started our market garden by building no-till mulch beds around the trailer. 

We completed our house, a beautiful and functional strawbale home with attached greenhouse and earthen plasters, rainwater system, and edible landscaping, in January 2010.  We have also evolved away from growing market produce and are focusing on a fruit/nut/berry nursery, homesteading, handcrafted wooden utensils, and raising three delightful children.

Following the predicted permaculture pattern of use zones, we have not continued to up-keep our old garden beds, even though they are only 200′ away from the new house.  Living in your garden seems the best way to keep it tended and we found that we needed to abandon the old systems to focus on the new ones around our house.

In fall 2011, we decided to open up the old home, its gardens and systems to ambitious people, eager to apply their experience from working on other farms but without financial resources to buy or lease land.  The Permaculture Incubator agreement would be that you can use the garden space and house as you like, even re-doing the beds and pathways.  You would be responsible for the electric bill (our was usually around $40/mo) and procuring either propane or wood for winter supplemental heat (there is a woodstove–we used about 2 cords of wood a winter), but your rent would be in the form of work exchange (16 hours a week total) helping us with various projects, mostly farm or homestead related.  The rest of your time it is up to your own ambition to work the land and landscape around you to grow things.  We are happy to lend our experience and advice, but you will be doing your own work and finding your own markets. 

Total garden bed space is around 3/4 acre. There is also a one acre pasture area with a 10 x 12 chicken coop which is pretty brushy and un-fenced, but has a number of half-grown fruit trees and good potential.

Brambleberry Farm is exactly one hour south of Bloomington, IN and one hour northwest of Louisville KY, both with thriving local food movements and full of outlets for local food (Bloomington Farmers Market, Louisville Farmers Markets ). There is also a great farmer’s market 10 min north of us in Orleans, IN and a natural foods co-op 5 min away in Paoli (LostRiverMarket & Deli ).

We are willing to consider pets.  Dogs must complete their own application process (i.e. we need to meet your dog and be assured that it will not jump up on customers, chase livestock, etc.  We have had problems with dogs in the past and need to be very careful.)

Since you will be farming on your own, prior experience is highly recommended. Permaculture Incubator applicants must submit a resume (can be informal list of work experience), and 3 references: 1 former employer, 1 living situation (i.e. landlord or roommate/housemate), and one personal reference (such as a mentor or friend).  Send application to mail@brambleberryfarm.org