Paid Farm Mentorships
Through the Beginning Farmer Educational Series, participants have the opportunity to be paid to work on a local farm learning directly from a mentor farmer.
This educational aspect of the Beginning Farmer Educational Series provides participants the opportunity to take a seasonal position where aspiring farmers help cultivate, harvest and package for their local market on mentor farms. Mentees have the opportunity for one-on-one time with mentor farmers to ask questions about their specific practices. This helps mentees understand and learn more about the realities of farming to help navigate their hopes and dreams of becoming a successful farmer.
2024 Mentor Farms
Happy Hens Homestead
(Booneville, Ky)
Happy Hens Homestead is a bakery and farm. They have 3 high tunnels under production 9-10 months a year with outside garden areas. They raise dairy goats, chickens for eggs, and sometimes meat chickens, hogs and sheep.
Seedleaf Headwater Farm
(Lexington, Ky)
Seedleaf Headwater Farm is a regenerative and cooperative farm focusing on agroforestry, agrotourism, a greenhouse, they also host market gardeners year around including a refugee farming cooperative while addressing the challenges of climate change, food insecurity and well-being for all.
Wolf Gap Gardens
(Berea, Ky)
Wolf Gap Gardens is a certified organic small-scale farm with permanent no-till raised beds. Wolf Gap Gardens is managed using regenerative and soil conservation practices including cover cropping, interplanting, intensive spacing, and crop rotation.
Slak Market Farm
Slak Market Farm is a micro-dairy where the Abraham family specializes in the production of their signature raw milk and halal meat products. Kenya has a strong dedication to utilizing their farm as a place for serving the well-being of not only her family but for the well-being of the raw milk community that they have built through relationship farming.
Old Homeplace Farm
Old Homplace Farm manages 2 acres of vegetables and cut flowers with an intensive permanent bed system. They have 4 high tunnels, raise and sell veggies year round, with their main sales season running from May through December. They follow all organic practices, raise beef cattle, sheep, and goats with rotational grazing through a variety of pasture systems (silvopasture, native warm season grasses, novel endophyte cool season grasses).