Enrollment for 2025 is now open. Applications welcome and we will set up interviews starting in early January for a start date early April.
Welcome to our 90 acre playground! Are you someone who wants to learn about yourself, make new friends, build your skill set, have a good time and work on changing the world for the better? Here at Sirius, we offer an intern program where all this is possible.
The internship consists of several themes woven together throughout the seasons. In our first theme, participants learn techniques for small scale diverse organic annual and perennial food systems. This includes the basic principles of permaculture and permaculture design and how to apply them to the landscape. We focus on the ins about outs of growing a diverse garden for a small conference center and what each crop needs. This includes work in the greenhouses, garden bed preparation, using planting charts, seasonal plantings and flow, compost making, pest management, and harvesting, cooking and processing food.
We do all of the work by hand in a raised bed system which includes two diverse food forests and roughly an acre of annuals. While our annuals consist of the common vegetable crops, the perennial crops cultivated include blueberry Paw Paw, kiwi, chestnut, raspberry, Asian pear, grape hearty kiwi etc.
Our second theme is all about the built environment including carpentry and tools, plumbing, green building and alternative technologies. Interns work on necessary community projects from building compost bins to making lumber. They experiment with natural and green building methods and compare alternative and standard carpentry practices. We have a full tool shop and teach you how to use our sawmill and turn tree trunks into lumber. We describe best drying practices, how to plane boards, use power tools and cut in a straight line. You gain confidence in your ability to hammer, make natural building mud recipes and stack a lumber pile. Some of the projects on the list for 2024 include working on a wind power project, redoing an out building using natural materials, re-shingling a roof, making lumber, driving the tractor, making firewood and making wood chips and so much more.
Our third theme involves living and working in community and better knowing yourself. We explore the ins and outs of community living from best financial practices to how to get along with each other and make decisions to eclectic spiritual practices. Topics can include non violent communication, meditation, organizational management, reflection exercises on your own life journey and sharing closes space and time with a small group for many months.
As a conference center that hosts weekend workshops, we also help with short term weekend guests including cooking, preparing spaces and supporting the guest services manager.
Work-Trade Program
The program is a work trade program and runs from April to November and though we encourage participants to be here for the entire time, it is not required. A longer stay helps you experience all the topics and projects.
We usually host 6 interns at a time plus revolving regular shorter term volunteers. Participants work 4.5 days a week. Four of those days are with the program focalizers and focused on intern tasks while one afternoon a week includes a check in, a feedback session and a sit down class taught both by the focalizers and different community members.
The other half day on Saturday mornings is with the rest of the community with a focus on general community needs. Your time off is Saturday afternoons, Sundays and Mondays to do as you wish.
In exchange for your work you receive room and board which is a small dorm living space with two private room options and an organic vegetarian diet which we and the community take turns cooking. (we do not provide meat, though there is separate places to cook it as needed). Most evenings are free time but you are encouraged to join in meetings and other spontaneous social events on the land as interns are part of the community and active participants while you are here.
While the work is physical and requires stamina, it revolves both around the education of participants to gain competency plus achieving our weekly goals and getting the work done. During the spring we focus mostly on the garden and work more on the carpentry and natural building in the summer months.
A typical day:
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- 7:30 am – Meditation (some days)
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- 8:00 am – Self serve breakfast
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- 9:00 – 1:00 – Gardening (Tuesdays is the big harvest)
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- 1:00 – 2:30 – Lunch, usually with a 45 minute break
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- 2:30 – 5:00 – Carpentry projects or Garden
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- 6:30 – 7:30 – Community Dinner
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- 8:30 – 10:00 – Optional meetings and events
Wednesday Afternoon Classes
The sit down class and weekly check in gives us a formal weekly pause. We learn how you are doing, get feedback about logistics and your experience and offer and in depth look at one of the topics we have brought up during our hands on work. This creates depth of learning and helps you absorb and understand the material.
While some of the classes are the same yearly, input from the current intern group will steer the curriculum.
Some Class Topics:
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- Introduction to Community Living
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- Introduction to Green and Natural Building
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- Introduction to Wood Carpentry and Power tools
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- Pruning
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- Herbal Teas and Tinctures
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- House Construction Basics
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- Permaculture Principles and Design
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- Seasonal tasks for Vegetable growing
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- Basic Cooking with Fresh Produce
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- Composting and Soil Systems
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- Biodynamics
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- Financial Permaculture
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- Food Preservation
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- Seed Saving Propagation and Grafting
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- Attunement to Nature
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- Candle making
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- Orienteering
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- Shiitake Mushroom log cultivation
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- Bike Repair
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- What is it that you truly want for yourself?
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- Non Violent Communication and Mediation
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- Tranformational Kineseology
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- Inter generational Constellations
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- Small Scale biogas
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- Reiki
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- Reflective Journaling
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- Yoga
To read about the experiences of previous interns, you can read the following blogs written by Faith, a 2022 intern: Sowing Seeds, Taking Root, and Reaping Harvest or read the testimonials from our WWOOF page here.
To apply, please fill out the online application.
For questions about the program, contact Llani Davidson by e-mail (intern.program@siriuscommunity.org) or phone: 413-230-4905.