Study permaculture online through Cornell University’s distance learning program.
Create a design portfolio based on your own project and complete all three of the courses from home to earn a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC). Continue reading
Study permaculture online through Cornell University’s distance learning program.
Create a design portfolio based on your own project and complete all three of the courses from home to earn a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC). Continue reading
You will still be able to find our premium Berkshire-breed pork at the Ithaca Farmers Market every weekend through December. However, all the pigs now roaming and rooting in the fields and woods are spoken for! We will start taking orders for half-pigs again in April.
Cayuta Sun Farm is proud to be a sponsor of the Permaculture Tour Weekend’s activities and we’re looking forward to hosting visitors. Our site has promoted permaculture for over a decade through community education events, including the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute’s courses.
We would like to support this celebration of our permaculture community and welcome out-of-town visitors. Rustic camping sites are open for reservations. A simple low-pressure water supply, hot shower, and composting toilets will be available. You will need to supply your own tent.
Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute alumni may stay for free.
Permaculture Weekend travelers are also welcome to book a campsite through HipCamp.com. If HipCamp reservations are sold out, please contact directly via email <Michael@CayutaSunFarm.com>. There may still be more camping space for this special occasion.
Cayuta Sun Farm is proud of our pastured poultry and pork and would like you to taste why. Upon arriving for the Sunday tour, make an order for our pork sausage meal. Better yet: Preorder! Last year we sold out quickly. Use this online form to buy in advance and be sure to enjoy a woodland-raised, heritage breed, pork lunch.
Enjoy your freshly grilled sausage and salad at a picnic table in the cool shade of our shiitake mushroom yard. We begin grilling at 11 a.m. Cold non-alcoholic drinks will also be sold.
You can make a deposit to reserve packages from a menu of meats we offer online for pickup on August 25th, 2019. If you don’t find what you are looking for online, ask us when you visit. We’ll have frozen pork and chicken for sale at the farm. Bring a cooler. We accept credit cards.
Sunday’s guided tours will be conducted in a continuous loop from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Join in at anytime but please register with your likely arrival time at the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute’s site. Led by Michael Burns, the presentation will highlight the development of a permaculture-inspired farmstead that has in recent years become a small woodland farm. Highlights include the octagonal classroom built of black locust logs with a reciprocal rafter roof, chickens and pigs raised on grass and under the canopy of trees, plus off-grid energy systems.
Michael will offer a short “Introduction to Permaculture” presentation at 9 a.m. Please register in advance.
A decade’s worth of permaculture students, teachers, and practitioners have passed through Cayuta Sun Farm working, learning, and connecting with others. We feel lucky to be part of it all, are proud of our local permaculture scene, and look forward to sharing the promise of permaculture and ecological design with all our guests this weekend. Please remember that your donations this weekend support the work of the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute which has been a keystone organization building the local and regional permaculture movement.
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with Michael Burns of Cayuta Sun Farm
and Steve Gabriel of Wellspring Forest Farm.
This apprenticeship is ideal for Permaculture Design Certificate graduates and others interested in forest farming, small farm design, mushroom cultivation, pastured animal and perennial agriculture.
Cayuta Sun Farm is seeking individuals for a part-time program (20 hours per week) of farm projects and design from May through September. Apprentices receive hands-on instruction at Cayuta Sun Farm through permaculture design assessment tasks and attend local forest farming workshops WellSpring Forest Farm & School. Apprentices are provided with all their food and camp at Cayuta Sun Farm.
Located between Ithaca and Watkins Glen, NY, Cayuta Sun Farm is a small woodland farm and permaculture education site. Log-grown shiitake mushrooms, grass-pastured poultry and forest-pastured pork are grown for market. The farm occasionally hosts visitors, tours, and permaculture-related educational events, including those organized by the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute.
Apprentice Priorities
Apprentice work is focused on livestock management and chores that includes a daily schedule of running the food, water, health and safety chores, plus the maintenance and development of these livestock systems. If you are comfortable, observant and sensitive around animals, you will live and learn around the schedule, patterns and processes of raising pigs and chickens on pasture and under the canopy of trees. No experience is required but it is helpful if you have prior livestock care experience.
Additional time is spent with the ongoing permaculture assessment of Cayuta Sun Farm. Practice mapping and analyzing landscapes using permaculture principles. Observe and record the farm’s systems by creating ecological assessments of the landscape, including animal and human elements. No experience is required but it is helpful if you have any of the knowledge or skills: earned a Permaculture Design Certificate; an understanding of permaculture design methods; landscape design; the Scale of Permanence; mapping/cartography; or forestry, farming or gardening skills.
Additional Opportunities
You may be able to offer your own specific talent and skills if time and budgets permit. Feel free to offer your best in the application and interview. In the past apprentices have also worked our shiitake mushroom yard and in direct and online marketing.
No experience is required, just a willingness to learn and work collaboratively with the farmers and your fellow apprentices.
Workshops
Apprentices are enrolled in the summer courses at Wellspring Forest Farm:
Expectations
No previous experience is necessary, although graduates of reputable permaculture courses will find this an ideal opportunity to practice permaculture design skills and to build their design portfolio. Only an interest in sustainable, regenerative design is necessary to benefit.
You are expected to devote 20 hours per week to the apprenticeship. Past apprentices have immersed themselves into full-time farm life, gaining valuable skills and insights. Others have maintained part-time jobs off the farm. Many—as they network among the local scene and gain practical experience—find opportunities for paid work later in the summer and fall. We seek persons who can begin in May and continuing through mid-September. Please apply for a shorter volunteer visit through WWOOF-USA.
Our weekly farm meetings will set priorities alongside chore and project schedules. The meetings are also an opportunity to ensure that food, infrastructure, education and other apprenticeship needs are being met.
No special tools or materials are required, except a maybe a pair of rubber and/or steel toe boots. We provide chore gloves.
Other expectations and obligations include:
Farm owners Michael Burns and Kelly Dietz offer:
An ideal candidate will have great communication skills, maturity, integrity, initiative, flexibility and decent physical strength. You should expect to be outside in all weather conditions including rain, cold and summer heat of 90-100 degrees.
Previous experience is valued but not required. A valid driver’s license helps. A car is not required but is recommended, as it will allow you greater access to the beautiful environment and vibrant cultural life found in the Finger Lakes and in nearby Ithaca and Watkins Glen.
College Credit
We can work with administrators and professors to document and supervise your work to earn credit from your institution. Students have earned credit while studying with us through Ithaca College, Cornell University, Paul Smith College, and Empire State College. Co-owners Michael Burns and Kelly Dietz are both professional educators with decades of experience teaching in high schools, universities and in community education.
Committment
This apprenticeship assumes your arrival in May and a committment into September. Shorter stays are possible. Please apply for a shorter volunteer visit through WWOOF-USA. Otherwise, please provide the information requested below and email it to <Michael@CayutaSunFarm.com>. We will consider applicants until we have found qualified candidates.
Cayuta Sun Farm will be attending the Annual Farmers Market held for Thanksgiving shoppers in Press Bay Alley. Come by Tuesday, November 20, 2018 from 4:30 to 7:30 pm to shop among your neighbors and friends.
Prepare your feast with produce and meats from local small farms. We encourage you to try out our new online market preorder system. Make a deposit for roasts or other cuts and a package will be waiting for you on the market day you select.
Press Bay Alley is found at 118 West Green Street, in Ithaca, NY. Learn more about the market at: https://www.facebook.com/events/2286984331529692/?ti=ia.
Visitors to Cayuta Sun Farm during the 5th Annual Finger Lakes Permaculture Permaculture Weekend are offered a morning “Introduction to Permaculture“ presentation, a pork sausage BBQ Lunch and tours of the farm.
If the weather and mycelium cooperate, shiitake mushrooms will be fruiting on the logs in our mushroom yard. Tour participants will be able to purchase by the pound mushrooms they harvest on their own.
In addition, a collection of local farms and vendors will be open for business from 10 am to 4 pm in a mini-farmers market. The line-up includes:
Ithaca-based filmmaker Irene Case produced this short documentary about the local food scene. The Ithaca Farmers Market manager, patrons plus the owners of Kingbird Farm and Cayuta Sun Farm describe their experiences on farm and at market.
In just ten minutes of sometimes quirky and funny footage, the film explores the personal, social and economic themes of small farms and their customers at the Ithaca Farmers Market.
Cayuta Sun Farm is honored to be part of this film and truly appreciates the professionalism, quality and accuracy that Ms. Case and her crew demonstrated throughout their work.
On the first day of spring, I tossed a bucket of apples into the piglet yard and watched their sugar rush unfold with a frisky rooster and nervous guinea fowl in the mix…
We raise Berkshire breed pigs on pasture. Their feed is supplemented with milk whey, vegetable and fruit scraps, and–once they are big enough–with the complex nutrition they find in our woodland pastures. Live pasture, real sunlight, and genuine herd relationships create a low-stress environment that produces superior pork.
BACON ALERT: Our naturally brined and smoked bacon is in low supply… this event may be the last of our belly, shoulder and back bacon until June.
HAM ROASTS: We have a collection of smoked ham end roasts… perfect for a holiday feast.
CHICKEN: A few Dark Cornish roasters and some regular whole broiler chickens will be available.
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